Dream of Reality
by Makura Koneko
Summary: Dreams are a funny thing, maybe because they are so hard to understand... Maybe that is because what we preceive as reality, is actually just a dream... At least, that's what happened to me. -Usagi
1. Chapter One: An Eight Point Star

**_Dream of Reality_**  
  
**Chapter One**

  
by _Makura Koneko_  
   
  
  
  


  
  
"Congratulations, once more, Chiba-san," My Uncle Taito shook hands with Mamo-chan, and I, on his arm, beamed. He turned to me, and embraced me; I was reluctant to let go of Mamo-chan, even for a moment, even to hug a beloved relative. I was back in his arms quick enough, though, and my friends all around me grinned at the eagerness with which we held each other.  
  
"Thank you, Tsukino-san," Mamo-chan said- he was still such a prince!- to my father's brother. "But it is I who must congratulate you on being related to so lovely a creature as my Usako." He looked down and winked at me. I grinned. I knew he meant every word, but the tone -lavished with sappiness- was for the sake of my cousins, all vivid green with jealously. I only cuddled closer to him.  
  
The party, our engagement party, ended soon after that. I even managed to offer to help clean up. Minako had only laughed, shooing us away and telling us to go home and get some rest.  
  
According to everyone except my parents, Luna, Artimus, and the Senshi, Mamo-chan and my wedding wasn't until next week.  
  
But we hadn't been able to wait...  
  
We had been officially married no more than an hour after he had first proposed, so, naturally, we were already living together...and sharing a bed.  
  
Sleep came easily that night, after several long lasting goodnight kisses over mugs of hot chocolate before a fire and warm cuddles. I snuggled up next to him, wrapped snuggly in his warm embrace. He kissed me on top of my head, through my mane of golden locks...I glanced up at his face...he kissed me...and I, Usagi Chiba, went to sleep.  
  
She would never wake up.  
  
And yet...in a way...she never went to sleep in the first place.  
  
  
  


                                                                  ~*~  
  
  
  
"Dreams...they're a funny thing." So Luna had said one night, when I had awoken from the oddest dream; in the dream, I had just awoken from a long, deep sleep to see a face above mine, concerned, calling me 'lady.' I hadn't been able to shake the feeling that the dream was more than just a dream...never did I imagine the extent of the meaning of the dream.  
  
Yes, dreams are a funny thing, mainly because they are so hard to understand, to control. Even harder than reality. Maybe that is because what we perceive as reality, is actually just a dream...a dream within a dream. Maybe as you read this, you are actually asleep, and you won't realize it till you wake up. Perhaps you will never realize it. You know how some dreams are; you know you dreamed, but you don't remember what. I'm sure there are times when you dreamed vividly, and, in the morning, don't even remember dreaming at all.  
  
Or maybe, when we sleep, our spirit goes to another place, where you are an entirely different person. And when you awaken, your spirit returns to slumber once more, like a reversed reality. A mirror dimension. Maybe some people you know are actually the spirits of a 'real' person in another realm. Eerie thought, ne? But with that theory, at least people you know as your dream self are real, somewhere. But what if...what if you suddenly woke up, and realized that your family, your friends, your hair color, your memories were all created simply by randomly released neurons in your brain? What if your reality, is no more than a dream?  
  
When that happens, that is when the true nightmare begins.  
  
My friend, the face I had seen when I had awoken within a dream, the concerned one with the voice calling me 'lady,' he had asked me to record my 'dream life.' I find with my new reality, that my handwriting is perfect, my spelling nearly flawless, as if I have had a whole other life of training, one I don't remember.  
  
This account, the one you are reading now, is the end to my story, following right after the engagement party of my beloved and I, which you read above. That day was the end of my life as Usagi Tsukino. I went to sleep that night...and for all accounts, never woke up. At least, not to what I had previously perceived as reality. But in going to sleep that night, I came into another reality...or is this simply all the dream? I don't know. You read, and you decide.  
  
  
  


                                                                  ~*~

  
  
  
  
They had split up. It was the safest; a group of two or less attracted much less attention than a group of nine. Each would look for the entrance to the opening over the fires of Mount Doom, as well as anything else useful, and they would meet back up outside.   
  
They each carried a replica of the Ring, forged by the wizard Gandalf hastily a few days before...maybe if one of them were captured, if they had a fake, maybe some would believe they were the only person come to destroy the evil object. It was a hopeless ploy, they all knew, but the only one they had.  
  
It was the white elf of the Fellowship that discovered what would be their entire world's salvation, though he, Legolas Greenleaf, knew it not.  
  
The shadows were thick with evil and malice. Even simple darkness was cleaner than the blackness that surrounded everything he passed while slinking down the hall. He was only glad for the dark cloak the Lady Galadriel had given each of them, that hid his lighter colored clothing and hair from giving him away.  
  
He came to another door; another dungeon, from the looks of it...but no need to take chances. He crept to the door. His hand, pale compared to the blackness that surrounded him, and lifted the door handle, but not before peering inside through the slits in the door. He slipped inside, the silence and stealth of his kind aiding him in this endeavor.  
  
The room inside was just as dark as the hall; only his Elven eyesight allowed him vision. Still, he was careful of tripping over anything. It was this caution that kept him from falling prey to a series of steps leading downwards, the floor having fallen away long ago to reveal these steps just before him. He spotted the steps just in time, and skirted back, frowning at the slight noise he made.  
  
Did this lead to the fiery pits which they all sought?  
  
One way to find out...  
  
Down and down he went into the darkness, keeping one hand on the wall, lightly, not even letting his fingertips disturb the dust that lined the walls.  
  
His senses began tugging at him, and just as he had sensed the uruk-hai coming their way on the banks of the river, so now he sensed he was nearing something also of great evil....great, great evil. He narrowed his eyes in the darkness as he perceived a sort of light ahead...like a black glow. And yet...through that black glow, a trickling of purity sang to him. A pinprick of light, true light, sheathed in all that black vileness.  
  
It was then that Legolas finally emerged into the cavern; high vaulted ceilings supported by inwardly arching creatures that looked like a cross between demons and angels. Between each pillar was a skeleton strapped to the wall; the remains of lavish satin and silk gowns adorning the once beautiful female bodies, now no more than bones.  
  
A huge chandelier hung high above, covered in age old cobwebs, the candles chewed away by various vermin.  
  
Legolas but glimpsed all this before his gaze was pulled directly to the alter, atop a three foot high dais, in the very center of the room. His eyes widened ever so slightly at the sight. That was the only thing that betrayed how his heart had stopped. Whether in fear or awe, he did not know.  
  
A woman lay atop the alter among satin and silk and gauze pillows of black and gold. A large square of sheer black gauze, lined with black diamonds, was on top of her, pulled tightly over her curves by the weight of the diamonds that hung over the sides and end of the alter. Only her shoulders, neck, and face were exposed, along with the mass of hair that reached a shade of darkness not even the evil around him could achieve. The locks pooled around her, overflowing onto the floor all around her and her alter. Black diamonds, black opals, and black pearls, netted by strings spun of dark silver were woven throughout the entire mass of tresses.  
  
Her skin was alabaster white, as if she'd never seen pure light at all, let alone the sun. Her arms, visibly laying at her sides underneath the black gauze, were slender, as if they'd never moved, the muscles ever unused. Her face, Legolas could see as he brought himself to take a step closer, was set in an expression of peaceful slumber, a slight smile on her dark red lips. Long, thick lashes naturally curled brushed the top of her high, elegant cheek bones, her eyes closed. Somehow Legolas thought with confidence that they, her eyes, were as black as her hair, and -probably- her heart.  
  
But what was that pinprick of goodness he had sensed? It was gone, now...or was it? He walked closer, his gaze intent on her face.  
  
"Lady?" He whispered, his voice barely audible. The darkness around him seemed to eat up the sound. He stood over her now, looking down at her sweetly beautiful face.  
  
What was something so lovely doing in so evil a place? What foul plan did Sauron have for this maid?  
  
Legolas touched her cheek; her skin was as cold as death, yet he could oh-so-faintly feel the barest heartbeat of life in her. "Lady?" He repeated. Was this a mistake, trying to awaken her? That was when he spotted them; underneath the gauze, shackles, chains, holding her down to the alter; she was a prisoner, much as the other women strapped to the wall had been, those who were now skeletons. He glanced at them again; was this woman to share their fate? Had she known them? Now that he looked closer, he saw, on the brow of each skull, an odd mark, it's color still vivid, as if it was almost glowing. He frowned. They meant something, those simples. Foul or good, he did not know.  
  
Legolas turned his attentions back to the black lady before him. He touched her cheek again, letting his fingertips run up her face, across her brow-  
  
The result was instantaneous; light flared! Real light! It burst forth like a fountain from her brow, from a mark that was shining so brightly Legolas couldn't block it out as he was forced to stumble back. The light lanced at the darkness surrounding the girl, but was shattered. The beams of light were smashed by the darkness, and as Legolas watched, the light fell back down as rain; it was raining tiny stars all around the girl...they, the tiny stars, hovered all around her, and she was surrounded by a cloud of light....silver in color, he now noticed, when it had been golden a moment ago.  
  
He could see the mark, now. Two, actually. An upturned, golden crescent moon, and a dark silver upside down one, overlapping it. They flickered in such a way that it looked as if they were fighting for dominance...as Legolas watched with fascination, the golden one flickered...and died. The dark silver one glowed warmly for a moment, then it, too, faded till it was only a simple outline on her brow.  
  
Legolas looked around, sure that the light show must have attracted someone, but no one was around. Silence reigned supreme, as if there wasn't even air to carry sound at all. Yet Legolas breathed.   
  
He stepped up to the girl on the alter once more.   
  
"Lady?" He asked once more, touching her other cheek with the back of his hand; did she still live? Yes, beneath her cold flesh, blood flowed.  
  
He was caught off his guard when the woman's eyes abruptly, and without warning flitted open. His presumsion of her eye color was shattered when he saw that they were the most vivid, vitalizing blue! Her eyes were large, full of innocence and sincerity...it took Legolas's breath away. Even as her eyelids began to flutter closed, Legolas saw, as the eyes began to flicker as a solid silver-black eating away at the blue, he saw...  
  
He saw the universe.  
  
In a tenth of a second, the Elven prince was taken through nebula clouds, to the birth place of a new star, a new solar system, to see the death of another, the creation of another species, the song of the starlight weaving around the moonbeams that danced around every moon.  
  
In a moment, he had seen, and been everything...simply by glimpsing the eyes of a girl who lay as though in death in the heart of the most evil place on earth...  
  
A need to get her out of that place, a desire to let her see sunshine, to let her feel the wind in those glorious tresses of hers, to let her experience for herself the glory of seeing spring, become summer, of summer becoming fall, and then diving into winter. He wanted to teach her how to climb trees, how to pick the ripest fruits...he wanted to see those eyes again, as they finally fell closed with the sweetest, softest sigh.  
  
Footsteps!  
  
At once all of his senses were alert to the sounds of a mini-army stomping by above. His grip on his bow was as if he had never let go of it, as he whipped it out from underneath his cloak, accompanied by an arrow as he flung his hood back. He slipped around the other side of the alter. The vibrations in the floor gave away the arrival of two, no, three Orcs in the huge cavern.  
  
"She's still there..." One of them grumbled. "Whutz the mahster want with 'er, anyway?" It grumbled nasily.  
  
"He wants her to die, o'course," The other wheezed. "He seemed 'appy enough when the others went 'poof' and their flesh turned to dust."  
  
"Me thinks it's a sort o 'if I can't 'ave her, no one will' type thing." A third said. Hisses and cries of pain were heard moments later as the other two clobbered him. After a few more grumblings, the three of them left, hobbering up the steps, leaving a hidden elf prince with some thoughts to chew on as he followed suit, giving the slumbering maiden one last look over his shoulder, with a mental promise to return once he had finished his scouting. He slipped up the stairs, silent as ever, forcing himself to think of the task at hand.  
  
He didn't notice when her eyes fluttered open once more behind him...  
  
  
  


                                                                  ~*~

  
  
  
The woman yawned and arched her back in a bit of a stretch, expecting to feel her Mamo-chan beside her. She smiled through her daze at the memory of yesterday's party, and the thought of the other parties to come...  
  
Then she realized her husband wasn't beside her. She frowned...He usually stayed with her either until she woke up, or he woke her up himself...maybe he had waken her, and she'd just forgotten, she tried to reason... It wasn't unlike her...  
  
Then the scent and sensations hit her...  
  
She opened her eyes...  
  
...And immediately wished she hadn't. Fear gripped her; she lay on a bed that was made on top of what appeared to be some sort of alter. She lay among red and gold and black satin and silk sheets and pillows. A sheer black gauze lay over her, pulled taught by the diamonds that lined the edge of it and hung over the sides of the alter.  
  
The room she was in was most decidedly some sort of tomb or dungeon; skeletons lined the walls...skeletons wearing familiar gowns...bearing familiar symbols on the brow of their skulls...  
  
Usagi screamed...  
  
And the sound was eaten up.   
  
Usagi began to panic. Where was she? Where was Mamo-chan? Why did the skeletons around the room have her Senshi's symbols on their foreheads? Was this some sort of freaky icky warning?  
  
A million ideas and reasons flew through her mind; was Demando back? Had he come for her? Had Chaos come back and decided to keep her for its own amusement? Had some new enemy found a way to capture and confine her while he/she/it wrecked havoc?  
  
That last thought made Usagi's eyes flash with determination. She'd show them! No evil was gonna keep her a prisoner! How dare they think they could chain her while they do as they please with her planet! With her home! And did they honestly think these phony skeletons would make her think her friends were dead? Ha!  
  
Usagi gripped the gauze and tossed it aside, the black diamonds tinkling against each other as she did so. Her movements weak and stiff with sleep...perhaps from a sleeping drug, as well. She swung her feet over the side of the bed...  
  
And yelped as, simultaneously, cold metal yanked her ankles back, and she felt her legs collapse back down to the cushions, trembling. She reached down to rub her sore limbs-  
  
And realized her wrists were shackled as well, and her arm, her hand, her fingers were trembling. She groaned and plopped back down onto the feather soft mattress and pillows. A headache pounded between her temples. She looked at the chains; they were long enough so that she could reach her hand to massage her forehead, at least. She tried to reach up to rub her brow...and whacked herself on the cheek! Her hand...her hand was shaking so badly...she looked at it...and it took all her concentration to close and open her fist...it was as if she'd never used her own arm before...she couldn't coordinate... It was then, as she let her arm fall back down beside her, that she noticed someone's black, black hair all around her. She forced herself to sit up, though now even her backbone and stomach and back muscles were trembling...she looked behind her, all around...but there was no one... With trembling, barely-able-to-move-hands, she touched a strand of her hair...she tried to grab it, but her fingers wouldn't obey her commands. She set her elbow down on the tresses, and pulled her head up...  
  
...And yelped with the pain it brought her scalp.  
  
This was her hair!  
  
But...but her hair...her hair was gold....not black....  
  
From that realization, everything, every sense, every bit of reality came crashing down...  
  
Her skin was too white...  
  
She couldn't move her own body right...  
  
She couldn't sense her Senshi...  
  
She couldn't feel the Silver Crystal...  
  
She couldn't feel Mamo-chan...  
  
She was surrounded by sickly thick evil...surrounded by darkness so solid you could cut it...  
  
Then everything blanked out. Usagi was still conscious, but her mind, her heart seemed to simply...shut down. She lay back down among the pillows and cushions, gripping a corner of one of the pillows, her eyes, now a solid silver-black, wide, staring, unblinking, her breathing shallow and too quick.  
  
  
  


                                                                  ~*~  
  
  
  
"What do you mean, you cannot return with me?" Boromir hissed; he had met up with Legolas, both had reported to each other that they'd finished their scouting routes, and neither had found anything. Now the elf prince was saying he couldn't leave quite yet,  
  
"I have a promise to keep," Legolas told him, his voice barely audible. He turned, sticking to the shadows so that Boromir could barely see him; it was as if the elf had merged with the shadows themselves!  
  
"I'm following," Boromir told him stoutly. His tone left no room for argument, so Legolas said nothing other than to throw the human warrior a glance over his shoulder that clearly stated, 'you get us caught, I'll kill you myself.'  
  
This promise was of some importance, then, Boromir thought as they eventually made their way to a particular door. Legolas glanced in, then, throwing a brief look to Boromir, the first he had since that first one, he slipped inside, leaving it open a crack to allow the other Fellowship companion to follow.  
  
When Boromir entered, he found that the Elven prince was gone. He looked around, and barely caught the slight shift of a shadow below; a fall-away stair case! So hidden in the shadows he would have fallen in, had he not caught the barest flicker of Legolas's cloak behind him. Boromir made silent haste to follow, so as not to get separated. All the while he was thinking, "What sort of devil-trap is he leading us into?"  
  
  
  


                                                                  ~*~

  
  
  
The sight that met Legolas's eyes upon entering the magnanimous cavern was a different one than last time; the woman was away, laying on her side, gripping one of the pillows as she stared with glassy, unblinking eyes at the far wall. Shock, he realized. The poor girl must have awoken, panicked, and slipped into shock...it was more imperative than ever to get her out there.   
  
Paying barely any mind at all to Boromir behind him, Legolas strode across the cavern. He touched the chains that bound her, upon reaching the alter; he expected the sparks that flew. He wished for his warded tools, but knew he had no time to even improvise making any.  
  
"If I fall, but she is free, take her, leave me, and go." Legolas said. Boromir nodded, but Legolas didn't even look at him. Taking a deep breath, he grabbed the chain around her wrist, and *shoved* with all his might everything he had *into* the very spells around the chain and shackle...  
  
The metal sparked, fizzed, and burst into a fine powder.  
  
It took every ounce of Legolas's Elven resolve to keep from stumbling from the exhaustion that washed over him. But it was that same Elven resolve that replenished him quickly enough. He gripped the chain around her right ankle, and repeated the process. This time it took a little longer for the fizzing and sparking to give way to the poofing of dust, but it came to pass nonetheless. This time Legolas blinked with weariness several times, taking several deep breaths before moving to the left ankle shackle. This time it took a grunt and a physical shove for it to even begin to spark. It took a gasp and a reminder of what he had seen in the girl's eyes before he managed to pull what he needed out of himself and into the spell, shattering it and the shackle; the powder that resulted wasn't as fine as the first 'poofing' had been, but the shackle and chain was no more, and thus good enough.  
  
'One more,' he thought to himself, too exhausted to even notice how drained he was...or the concerned looks Boromir was giving as he gripped the hilt of his drawn sword tighter.  
  
Legolas grasped the last shackle, putting his hands over the metal and around her right wrist, the one resting beside her beautiful face. He used his fingers to close her eyes so that no dust would get in them before renewing his grip once more. He took a deep breath...  
  
And shoved.  
  
Pushed...  
  
Crammed...  
  
Jammed....  
  
He pulled every last ounce of strength from his soul, but still it was not enough....  
  
'No! Not when I'm so close!' his mind and heart reached out to the girl, who was so close to being free...  
  
Only Boromir saw the spectacle that arose next; with a breathtaking display each skeleton lining the round room, seventeen in all, burst into it's own starburst of flaring light and magic. Silver-violet, pink, gold, navy blue, blood red, forest green, burnt orange-gold, sea aqua-blue, bright yellow, deep purple, dark burgundy, ice blue, pale red, pastel green, faded orange, blue-black, blue-white....  
  
As he watched, the skeletons -and the clothing- began to crumble to dust that dissipated before it even reached the ground...and in the center of the light-illuminated clouds of dust, was the origins of the lights. Where a skeleton had been, there was now, the same color as the light, a spike-star-shaped crystal.  
  
They began pulsing...  
  
Boromir whirled around...how can one fight light and crystal stars with a sword???!!!  
  
The pulsing continued... A cry was released... Boromir whirled, and his eyes widened; Legolas and the girl both were engulfed in a dark silver-black glow, that was pulsing in sync with the seventeen crystal stars...  
  
Without warning, and with a silent blast that shook the entire palace, the crystal stars rushed to the center of the room, forming a ring around the girl and elf at the alter. Boromir barely had time to throw himself to the ground to avoid having one of the crystal stars pierce right through him. The stars flashed once, brighter than the sun. A starburst flared out from the center of the sphere of light, engulfing the entire cavern. The cavern began to shake! Chunks of stone fell from the ceiling!  
  
And still there was no sound...only silence and violent vibration. An explosion unlike any other lifted Boromir right of the ground and slammed him into a pillar. He fell to the ground, groaning, holding his side as blood seeped out of his mouth. He forced his eyes open against the bright light, where he barely made out a tall figure thrust away from the alter the same as he had been...the same time the last chain shattered...  
  
The explosion that followed...it was so beyond human comprehension, time seemed to stop for Boromir as it took place. All he knew was that something had happened, something so beyond him it had caused him to see and hear and feel nothing but the whiteness that surrounded him. Something was happening...but he didn't know what...he could only cling to the whiteness until it released him back into a reality, once that reality had calmed to a level his human physic could handle....  
  
  
  


                                                                  ~*~

  
  
  
Legolas, too, floated in that same whiteness, though he could ever sense the girl near him... she was in the center of it all, the center of the power, both good and evil, the center of the light and the darkness. The center of the universe she held in her eyes and heart and soul. The center of the love that had once been showered down upon her by the beings that lived, pulsing within the star crystals that spun around her... Just as he could sense *her* he also sensed that she had absolutely no grasp of just who or what she was... She couldn't know. She was too pure, to simply innocent. She wasn't even human...  
  
Another presence...one of the crystal stars....it appeared just before him, glowing a soft silver-violet.  
  
"*Thank you...*" The voice wasn't even a voice, but a gentle sense of gratitude, radiating from the silver spike-star-crystal. The gratitude stemmed from every single star, to the silver one, to be conveyed to him...  
  
"For what?" Legolas found he was thinking the words, rather than speaking them, but it seemed it was good enough, for the emotions projected to him by the silver star were ones that directed his attention towards the girl; that was what they were thanking him for. For freeing her. A gentle knowledge entered his mind, tentively, as if the silver star crystal were asking his permission to tell him something...he gave his consent. Like a gentle trickle of water, he knew, suddenly, who she was. What she was. Who - and what- the crystal stars were...  
  
"You were her mother." Legolas addressed the silver-violet star. The star hummed gently, agreeing. He looked to the gold one. "You were her lover, her husband." The gold one, too, hummed. To the pink, he said "You were to be her daughter...yet you were never even born." The pink one seemed to sigh sadly in agreement. "And you..." He gave his attention to the blue-white and the blue-black ones. "You were her teachers. You taught her, loved her, as if she were your own." Legolas looked at the rest of them. "And the rest of you...you were her guardians, her friends." He nodded to the four whose colors were copies of the first four, but muted, paler. "You were to be the guardians and friends of her daughter. You all...you all protected her, this girl, this woman, even in death...you were her companions even in the dream-prison Sauron constructed for her... When you died, Sauron stole your souls, gave you bodies, but let you die..." He looked to the pale silhouette that faded into existence before him; he put his arms under and around it, and it settled into his arms, slowly beginning to solidify.  
  
"I see...." he said. "Sauron placed this girl, your beloved princess, in a sleep, while her soul and spirit weaved for itself its own world...an alternate earth where she was a heroine, just like she'd always wanted to be. When you all died, your souls joined her in her dream world, protected her soul from the evil that was saturating her body... So everything she ever knew, Beryl, The Dark Moon Family, Nehelania, Chaos...they were all demons her own subconscious conjured up...they were enemies she brought on herself to force herself to raise her power...she somehow knew the day would come for her to be released, to take revenge on the one that trapped you all here...while in her dream world, she trained herself without even meaning to...she doesn't even realize what has happened, does she?"  
  
All at once, the spirit star crystals pulsed, confirming what he had put together from the knowledge that had been slipped into his mind by the star that had once been Queen Selenity.  
  
"I will take care of her, I promise," Legolas vowed. "Until she can resurrect you all, I promise I will be her guardian in your stead."  
  
More gratitude washed over him, and at last the silhouette in his arms became solid; Princess Serenity lay in his arms, peaceful as could be. In this white spirit-plane, her hair was it's proper star-gold, her skin peachy-rose. But as the white began to give way, as it began to release him and the princess back into the real world, both her skin and her hair began to take on the colors caused by being saturated in evil for thousands of years. As he watched, the stars came together in a small cluster over Serenity's heart. They pulsed together, once, twice, before gently glowing and fading...fading...fading down together until there was nothing left but a small, pure crystal star, that gleamed every color of the rainbow when the light glanced off it just right...  
  
The Crystal, at the very last moment before the last of the whiteness around them faded, settled between her breasts, over her heart, sank into her flesh, and disappeared, safe until she called it out and summoned her friends and guardians to awaken so she could give them form once more...  
  
  


                                                                  ~*~

  
  
  
'C'mon, let's go!" Legolas came back into himself and back into the real world to find Boromir at his side, and the cavern crumbling around them. Sound existed once more, and the noise was deafening. Shaking himself and renewing his grip on the girl in his arms -thankful that somehow her hair had been shortened and he didn't have to worry about tripping over it- he and Boromir both dashed for the stairs, dodging falling debris and desperately trying to keep their balance all the while.   
  
The flight up the stairs was perilous; missing stairs gave way to bubbling magma below. When they reached the hallway, they didn't have time to be dismayed before they were set upon by orcs; only the luck of the orcs being more disoriented than they were allowed them a fighting chance. Legolas brandished a sword he pulled from somewhere, since he didn't have both arms available for archery. Cradling the small woman in one arm, he slashed his way, Boromir before him, to the open corridor that lead to the outside of the fortress.  
  
An orc grabbed Serenity's hair, but it slipped from his hands like water. While he stared at his hands in surprise, Legolas beheaded him, unconsciously shielding Serenity from the spray of inky blood that followed. A cry went up beside him, and he turned to find an orc, its top half lying atop its severed legs, and Boromir standing over it. Legolas nodded his thanks before leaping forward at another monster that raised it's ax above Boromir's head from behind, running it clean through, then yanking his sword out to swing it at yet another creature. The orc skipped out of the way, right onto Boromir's blade. Boromir shoved it off, and leaped forward again...  
  
The battle raged on, but at last they stumbled through the doors, running ahead of the mass of orcs. Ahead of them, a gray, cloaked figure raged towards them on a stampeding black horse, another gray horse behind him.  
  
"Hurry!" Gandalf cried. Legolas, without pausing leaped atop the gray steed, Serenity held tightly to him, her eyes open wide with horror; she had awoken during the fight! Legolas had no time to even be annoyed at this, as he whirled the horse around and sped towards the huge gates. Orcs were desperately trying to shove the massively huge and heavy things closed, but they were too late; Gandalf, Boromir behind him, and Legolas, Serenity in his arms, flew through them with nary a hair's width to spare.  
  
  


  
                                                                  ~*~

  
  
It was well into the next day before the girl in Legolas's arms, before a camp fire that was surrounded by now ten travelers (Sam, Frodo, and Gimli asleep on their cots), that Serenity showed any sign of acknowledging the real world. She was well awake, but the shock of awakening to find herself in the arms of a strange, most decidedly not human male, in the middle of a bloody battle she did *not* want to think about...that tends to have negative affects, as the Fellowship was discovering...  
  
At last, after several failed attempts, Legolas was forced to simply lay her down on a mat and tuck a blanket around her, and return to the circle of the Fellowship to retell what had happened...  
  
"But why would Sauron care about stopping a simple girl from being reborn?" Pippin asked.  
  
"Because she is a threat to him," Aragorn said, playing with a bit of dried venison. "Because her power is opposite of his, as well as exceeding his, if Legolas's story is any indication." He glanced to the girl sleeping beside the aforementioned Elven prince. "He fears her."  
  
"Does he?" Boromir asked. "It seemed a bit too easy to get her out of there, if you ask me. I'm not saying it was easy, mind you all, but if she is what you all say she is... If I were Sauron, I'd put a bit more security around her than a few spelled shackles."  
  
"There are other forces at work here." Legolas said. "Forces beyond our comprehension." He threw a small stick into the fire, watching the sparks that flew up. Legolas looked down at her, slumbering with that same peaceful look on her face...  
  
"Hey, you said that even though their bodies were dead, her guardian...people, their spirits were still there?" Merry asked after a moment. Legolas nodded. "Well then, it wouldn't surprise me if, during all that time they were they, they worked on eating away at what defenses were there, maybe obliterating some of them completely."  
  
"You did mention a...black glow that surrounded her," Gandalf reminded Legolas. "Perhaps it had been a sort of shield at one point. Merryadock has a grand point." Merry beamed.  
  
"Perhaps..." Legolas tossed another twig into the fire before looking down at the girl again. "It makes me wonder what is to come for her, this girl who is so much more than she appears..."  
  
"That, I think, is not yet for us to know," Gandalf said. "We have played our part in the game of some grander scheme. Now it is up to this girl, and those 'forces' you spoke of, to make the next move. Whether or not we will be involved is yet to be seen." With these words, the wise old wizard lay down on his mat, and slipped into slumber. The others followed suit, leaving Legolas up to simply gaze at the girl. He wondered if the damage done to her body, her evil-infested body, would be undone by simply being away from all that darkness; the silver-black mark on her forehead *was* fading...  
  
Legolas sighed. As much as he meant to do his best to keep his promise, he couldn't deny the truth in Gandalf's words; something grander than even he, an elf, could perceive, something that -as much as he hated the thought- didn't include him... A 'game' Gandalf had called it. Was that all it was?  
  
He didn't know...but he did know that, whatever it was, be it a game, scheme, ultimate plan, random events of the cosmos, or destiny guided by the hand of some greater being, Legolas knew this; the girl, this woman, this princess, just as she had been the center of the good and the evil, the light and the darkness, so was she the center of the tapestry of fate and destiny that was being woven throughout time...  
  
As Legolas shook away his deep -too deep for any mortal, or even an elf to decently contemplate- and lay down in his cot beside her, he never noticed the silver-black crescent flicker, and fade... Only to be replaced, as the girl whom was the star peace in the ultimate game of the universe smiled gently in her sleep, not with the previous golden, upturned crescent moon, but with a white, eight-pointed star...  
  
  
  
  
**To Be Continued…**   
  
  
  
Well, this story won the poll! It shall be continued.

This story follows events as I perceive one of the many ways -were Lord of the Rings to be incorporated with Sailor Moon- things would go, if the Fellowship never broke up. Below I list the things different from the two actual series and this story.  
  
**1)** The Fellowship never broke up

**2)** Boromir never died.

**3)** Merry and Pippin were never kidnapped, and Gandalf met up with them before they got to Mordor, so all nine are now at Bara-dur.  
  
**4)** Mamoru isn't a jerk.  
  
**5)** Usagi is at least eighteen.  
  
**6)** Chibi-Usa never existed.  
  
**7)** Usagi has **all** her memories from the Silver Millennium.  
  
Thank you all for reading!  
  
  
** Hope Make the Universe Shine,**  
_Makura Koneko_  
  
  


  
**_  
*ALL STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY*_**


	2. Chapter Two: Dance With Me

**_Dream of Reality_**  
  
**Chapter Two**

  
by _Makura Koneko_

_"…not to what I had previously perceived as reality. But in going to sleep that night, I came into another reality...or is this simply all the dream? I don't know. You've read, now you decide…"_

Legolas Greenleaf, Prince of Mirkwood, closed the black leather bound book with silver etchings, a solemn look on his face.

He had just finished reading the long tale of the girl known as Serenity. The tale she had believed to be reality, but in fact had turned out to be nothing more than a dream… Her joys? Self given. Her enemies? Self inflicted. Her power? That was perhaps the only thing that was real. Her power was far greater than even she could imagine, let alone know. Her flaws? Most likely nonexistent. From the day of the announcement of her engagement to the Earthen Prince Endymion, it was all a dream.

True, the spirits of her friends had managed to instill themselves in her dreams, so _they_ were real, if not in a physical sense. Their words were real; she hadn't been controlling their actions. But the rest… Beryl and Metallia were figments of her imagination, borne out of her desperate need to know why her beloved Kingdom was no more. This Sailor Moon? This particular entity never truly existed, save within Serenity's mind, brought up out of her long hidden, deathly strong desire to be a Senshi, to be able to help her friends whenever they went into battle.

The Silver Crystal? A trinket, no more. A child's memory. Something her mother had given to her as a young girl, told her teasingly it was magic, that if she never needed help in the direst of moments, it would bring help. It had been, of course, a sort of summoner, something that would bring her mother to her if ever she were in trouble.

Somehow, Serenity's subconscious took that and turned the small, simple, almost worthless stone into this object of massive power. He wondered how she was reacting to now knowing it didn't really exist…? And if it did, it was on the Moon, most likely broken, and worth no more than a mere river stone, save for its ability to summon her mother? Even that ability was worthless, for Serenity's mother was now one of the eighteen spirits within her… How did she do it? All that power…barely contained by the translucent flesh of this tiny girl...

It was a wonder she had survived the journey from Mordor back to Rivendell, so fragile she was. Legolas had kept his promise to Serenity's mother, the Queen; he had protected her, even when the guards that bordered Rivendell had at first refused to let her enter. 

"The evil within her is greater than even we can hide," they had said. Then Frodo had loosed the news that Sauron was defeated. The guards had been distracted by this –or perhaps only pretended- thus Legolas managed to get Serenity into Rivendell without further problems.

She had been given a set of rooms, the bedroom she had hardly left since entering it. She'd hardly said a word… Once when trying to talk to her, Legolas had expressed that should she ever desire to tell anyone about her dreamlife, he would gladly listen, was even a bit curious.

The next morning, today, he had found the book he now held in his hands on the writing table. He turned it over and over in his hands, contemplating its contents. He wondered what it would be like, to have one's body decay, but the soul remain, as that was what happened to the Senshi. To connect the mind of your soul to the dream mind of a friend, instill yourself in that friend's dreams. To walk along in an illusion of your home, knowing it was all fake, that it was all conjured up by the wishful dreaming of one girl.

Legolas sighed. This girl was a mystery. The girl in the book, Usagi Tsukino? He felt like he knew her very well. This girl on the bed beside him? Completely unknown. Her hair was still completely black. Her eyes were blue, now, thank God, but a much, much, much darker shade of blue, almost black. And they seemed…they seemed to hold the cosmos themselves, bursting with unnaturally potent life. It wasn't right. Beautiful, but not right, and somehow frighteningly deadly.

Serenity stirred in her bed, hugging the satin sheets closer to her, her movements frail and trembling. She had regained much of her strength, spending her days walking in circles around her room, building up her muscles until her strength gave out. Then, for the rest of the day, she would sit at her window and keep vigil over the valley, as if it was hers to protect. She often looked at things like that. Even him. It was amusing; her, protect him? Perhaps at another time, in another situation. But the girl was barely able to walk in a straight line for more than a few minutes.

But then again, there was that power within her…the level and magnitude of which had given even Lord Elrond something to mull over. He had bid Legolas keep an eye on that level of power. Also to watch that pinprick of darkness that was so potent it might as well have been Sauron himself…

It was odd, though. Although that bit of darkness was within her, it was separate from her soul. How Legolas knew this, he did not know. It was as if he was suddenly privy to her every emotion, every need. Big brother times ten.

Again, Legolas sighed. Almost nothing about this girl made sense. She was a mystery. And like all mysteries, one can only do so much to unfold them. From there on…it is anyone's guess how things will go.

It was a week later that the signs began to show. First her already pale skin began to look practically transparent, papery and loose, like an old woman's. The fine bones of her hand showed through the skin, as did the pale purple veins. Her breathing became slightly more labored than was normal, and her daily walks around her room ceased to staggering walks to the window once a day to gaze out at all of Imladris. 

Then the storms had begun.

It had started with the occasional rainstorm. Nothing new, except that they seemed…agonized. Angry, almost. Angry at something that they could do nothing to vanquish.

Then came the snow- in early summer? Yes, snow began to descend upon the valley, far before it's time. Never before had it so stormed in Imladris, the magics of the elves keeping the worst at bay. Rainstorms, surely, but never such furious blizzards and thunderstorms and sleet and winds…

Legolas was, again, sitting at Serenity's bedside, worrying both about the city, about Serenity, and about the messenger he'd sent to his father a few days ago with a message explaining briefly why he had not yet returned home, despite Sauron having been defeated.

Legolas had made a promise to watch over the girl, yes, but even that did not explain the drive with which he protected her. Did he love her? No, not like that. Elves were soulbonded the moment they laid eyes on their soulmates, and he was not bonded with this girl. Not like that. But bonded in a different way? Most definitely. But of what genre this bond was, he did not know. Brotherly? Not quite. Too strong. It didn't explain how he seemed to instinctively know what she was feeling, thinking, wanting…

It was confusing indeed. More mysteries abounded by the day. It was frustrating, knowing that he had the source of many answers to those mysteries right in front of him, yet even when she was awake, Serenity didn't speak a word. Hardly ever even looked at him.

It was very frustrating indeed, but at the moment, his frustration would have to wait; her breathing was getting worse…

Serenity knew exactly what was happening.

That power building inside her? It was eating away at her very body. Too much… Now she knew what Sauron had kept her for. A battery. 

Now she knew why he had allowed her friends to die, but kept her alive. He _knew_ they would flee to her soul to protect her essence from the evil saturating her physical body. _Knew_ they would implant themselves within her. Once that had happened, twenty flows of immense power, including her own, were being channeled directly into her body. When those flows of power didn't find the bodies of her Senshi, they instead flowed into _her_, since she was the shell that housed the spirits of those that the flows of power were supposed to go to.

Only Sauron's constant feeding off that buildup, of the overflow of too many power flows in her single body had kept her alive. Now, with no one and nothing sipping at the power, keeping it small enough so that her body could contain it, she was being torn apart from the inside out… 

And it _hurt_…

Even in sleep, it hurt, on a level far beyond physical. It was as if her very soul were being shredded. She cried with all her heart, and the earth cried with her.

The storms…she wanted to stop them. It was destroying the city she had come to love. She watched the city every day…the city with a name she did not know. She would watch the people…she had come to know some by face, those that passed her line of vision daily.

The storms…they were angry. Angry that they could not help her.

The storms…they were the embodiments of her friends passions.

Earthquakes… Her beloved. Her husband. Endymion.

Thunder… Jupiter, Makoto.

Snow… Mercury, Ami.

Wind… Uranus, Haruka

Rain… Neptune, Michiru.

The moon had long ago ceased to show up at night; her mother.

Nightmares plagued everyone's sleep; her unborn daughter.

Fires had been breaking out, for no reason. That would be Mars, Rei.

The sun would refuse to shine on the valley. Venus, Minako.

The darkness of the night would become ominous…children would cry in fright of monsters that lurked in shadows. Saturn, Hotaru.

Time for the elderly would run out…babes would be born too soon… Pluto, Setsuna.

Serenity had to stop the storms… She knew how. Could she risk it? 

Did she have a choice?

No, she didn't.

In her sleep, a single tear ran down her face.

Under the blankets, a tiny star of multi colored light twinkled into existence inside the cage formed by her fingers, against her palm. Slowly it grew, and solidified into the same spike-star crystal that had been formed in that cavern in Mt. Doom, the crystal that had been formed by the joining of her friends and families star spirit crystals.

The pinprick of darkness that Legolas had been sensing was in that crystal in her hand. He thought it was her he was sensing. No, it was Hotaru he was sensing. If only she could tell him…make him stop worrying… For she, too, could sense his emotions and thoughts just as he could feel hers.

A most unusual union, indeed…

Serenity concentrated.

She had to stop the building of power within her before it tore her and the earth apart from the inside out… She had to redirect those eighteen extra flows of power…

Reaching deep down within herself, her physical body, she grasped, with one hand, a spec of potential life that had been formed inside of her thousands of years ago, on the Moon, on the wedding night of Princess Serenity's and Prince Endymion's wedding. The night before Sauron had destroyed everything. She seized that spec of sleeping life, cupped it gently, coddled it…loved it…

With her other 'hand' she snatched one of those nineteen flows of power, and slowly fed it into that potential life,  nudging it with love and life as one would gently blow on a flame to coax it into a blaze…

Just as a small flame, that spec suddenly flared into a thriving, seething, joyously, ecstatic burst of life.

The first flow of power redirected, nightmares all over the earth suddenly ceased, and a smile graced Serenity's face.

Now…

With a fierceness that would have made a demon tremble, Serenity seized the last sixteen power strands, and _shoved_ them into the star crystal in her hand, _shoved _them back into their proper spirit's hands. She felt her Senshi, their spirits within the crystal, grab onto their own power, take it from her, wrap it around themselves…

The power, overjoyed at feeling the soulful arms of their proper owners once more, surged…grew…mounted…climbed…

Serenity gasped in her sleep.

No!

The power grew, and grew, and grew… The storms outside went wild! They took on lives of their own, lashing, whip, tearing into the very strands of time and life. They were as rabid beasts, grabbing fistfuls of earth and reality and dreams with their fury and wracking it with their rage.

Mothers hugged their children to their bosoms, husbands covered their wives, animals flew for cover…

_"Stop it!"_ Serenity commanded, unaware that she'd screamed the words out loud. She felt her Senshi try to regain control over their own power…but it was useless… Without physical bodies to anchor their power to, it was like trying to grab onto the wind; you could feel it, could trap a bit of air, but the wind would continue to blow and blow and blow…

With one last, wrenching tear in the fabric of reality, the blanket that covered Serenity vaporized, her entire body flared with light, light that filled the entire valley, and the crystal in her hand shattered. Seventeen bursts of light, each a different color, in groups of four, shot away from her body, away from the building, away from the valley…they sped away in more ways than one; they sped through space, reality, dreams, wishes, hopes, love, hate and time.

"I will find you!" Serenity screamed, sobs wracking her body.

_Be strong…_all seventeen spirits whispered back. One, the golden one, hung back just barely long enough to blow a soft bit of love to graze her cheek…a kiss…

"I _will_ find you…" Serenity sobbed, and rolled on her side, naked, her clothes and the sheets and four poles of the bed evaporated. She didn't notice Legolas on the far side of the room, having been thrown back by the force of the light, staring at her with wide eyes. 

As elves, Elrond included, began pouring into the room, Legolas's eyes flitted to the window, looking out side.

The storms had stopped.

Things had taken a considerable amount of time to get back to normal. An Elven lady had shooed all the males out of the room once they had overcome their shock. Legolas had refused to budge, but had conceded to turning his back while the Elven lady and one of her friends redressed the comatose…what was she to be called? She was no girl, no human, not an elf, certainly not a dwarf…angel? Legolas of heard of such creatures from humans. But no, even that didn't seem right. Many people knew of and believed in angels, but this creature…she was something never seen or heard of before.

When Legolas was allowed to turn again, he found that the bed had been remade, Serenity clad in a soft lacy white nightgown. Her pallor was no more the pasty white of near death, but a sweet peaches and cream hue.

"What are you?" Legolas couldn't help but ask softly as he resumed his place at her side, in that chair, examining her face, hair, hands, memorizing her. He had no illusions of a romance with this being, whoever, whatever she was. Her emotions for this 'Mamo-chan' had been beyond questionable. She would know they still lived- but not within her. No, Legolas had spotted those lights, those same lights that had bid him protect their princess, he had seen them fly away from her body.

What was it she had said? 'I will find you?' Yet another mystery to add to the growing list of intrigues attached to this female. Legolas wondered if ever a single one of them would be answered.

Evil awoke.

Evil sniffed the air currents of Existence.

Evil smelled its prey, the reason it had been created, its quarry.

Evil howled on the winds of time, and let loose its servants to learn what they would.

Serenity awoke with a startled gasp- that howl! She curled up, whimpering like a child, crystal tears poised to cascade down from her clear cerulean eyes- not a speck of black to be seen. Pain of more than one kind wracked her body; physical, emotional, spiritual… Oh, the pain that came with the absence of her loved ones… Yet, no…she felt one yet linger. She latched onto that, and calmed herself.

Sweet songs…lovely melodies…

She found herself gazing out the window, with wide, starkissed eyes, to what buildings she could see on the far side of the valley of…what was this place called, she wondered? A beautiful name it must have, for such a pretty, pretty place…

Lovely melodies, sweet songs, pretty voices…

"Tell me, pretty voices, what is this place called?" She asked in the voice of an innocently curious child.

_Let us whisper to you, sweet child…_ The pretty voices answered back.

Ah!

Imladris!

"How pretty…pretty pretty…" she yawned, but she wasn't tired.

_Come dance with us…come dance…_

Serenity rose to her feet, slipping out from underneath the covers, and went to the door, dancing as she went, laughing sweetly.

Legolas woke with a start, to the sensation of something missing. Immediately his eyes flew to the bed- the empty bed.

In a flash the Elven prince had spirited to the window, and gazed down in shock at a most wondrous sight. Down below, and far to the right, at the edge of the woodland, dancing under the moonlight and stars, glowing with an unmistakably ethereal radiance, was Serenity.

Elven speed aiding him, he flew at once out of the room, flying past colors and people and faces and voices that blurred like a dream as he ran to where he'd seen a dancing fairy. He came to a stop at the edge of the small circular patch of soft grass. She danced and twirled and swayed on bare feet, sheer white nightgown swishing around her ankles, her long black hair swirling around her.

Blurred…everything blurred as in a dream. Peaceful and gentle, comforting and awe inspiring. Everything seemed to glow softly as with an inner light, as if Legolas was suddenly able to see the spirit of every flower, tree, every blade of grass. For indeed it looked like Serenity was dancing on a bed of thousands of tiny emeralds.

Serenity turned and looked at Legolas, and he regarded as she regarded him with a curious sense of inspirational delight.

"Come dance with me, Legolas," she said, her voice that of a million laughing children. It was both laughing, and sobbing. Delighted and frightened, ethereal and foreboding. Beautifully terrifying all at once. It seemed to him he felt her voice rather than heard it. Still she danced and smiled, swaying, holding her hand out to him as she danced her way over.

"Dance with me," she said. "The music is so pretty."

Legolas heard no music, and said so.

"Can't you hear it?" She said softly, casting her face up to the sky and twirling about, her arms open to embrace the universe. "They're singing, Legolas. It's so pretty…"

"I hear no voices nor any music, dear one," Legolas told her, as realization donned- she had the mind of a child. No, not even that. It was as if she had lost her mind, and all was left was the soul.

"I haven't lost my mind," Serenity said in a casual child's voice. "Just part of it!" she laughed.

"Who are you?" Legolas let the words slip out in a hushed whisper as he walked towards her. Serenity danced into his arms, wrapped her arms around his neck, and leaned up on tiptoes to whisper in his ear, and there was a power in her voice then that made the air around them sing with the stars.

"_I am everything and nothing, I am laugher and despair, I am dreams and nightmares, I am death and life, I am fire and water, wind and earth. I am peace and chaos, I am time and history_." She pulled back, and kissed him on the corner of his mouth before laughing gaily and whirling away once more, leaving Legolas to gaze after her in a mute sort of wonder.

"Come dance with me!" she pleaded again, casting a longing look at him as her body seemed to flow with the moonlight. "Please? Can't you hear them? They're singing…singing, singing, siiiingiiing…" She let her own voice sing, a melody so sweetly pure that Legolas indeed found himself moving towards her, taking her in his arms, and as she sang with the stars, together they danced a dance of child and guardian.

**_To Be Continued…_**

**Warning:** This will be one of those fics that won't make sense till the end. It will be intended to be whimsical, frightening, odd in its logic, one of those stories that _really_ stretches how far your mind and imagination can go, just how much you can grasp.

Everyone please note that this will **not** be a Legolas/Serena. I am truly 100% sorry to those of you that were hoping for one, but as much as I have come to love that coupling… Lets just say due to certain things, Serena won't be Serena, and the person I'm going to have her become… pairing that Serena with Legolas just makes my skin crawl. You'll see what I mean if you stick with the story. Though another, albeit much more minor, reason for not doing that coupling is my attempt to stay as far away as possible from Mary-Sue-dom. If you don't know what that is, review and tell me and I'll e-mail you with an explanation.

My next story after this will, probably, be Legolas/Serena, so don't worry, L/S lovers! I _have_ joined your ranks, after all, but the overall quality of my story comes before the pairings.

Now, hope you've all enjoyed, I'd be thrilled if you'd review with your opinions (if it's a flame, please at least explain _what _you don't like.), and hopefully see you at the next chapter! Ja ne!

**Hope Makes the Universe Shine,**

_Makura Koneko_


	3. Chapter Three: Illusions

**__**

**_Dream of Reality_**  
  
**Chapter Three**

  
  


by _Makura Koneko_

**Cythera**_, an island off the southern coast of __Ancient Greece_

**340 BC_,_**_ seven years before the death of Plato_

"The wind is laughing! It likes it here, too!" Serenity squealed joyously as she laid eyes on the extravagant villa overlooking the Mediterranean sea. She dropped her bag and rushed inside, running up and down the halls, peeking into bedrooms and swinging through the silk draperies that decorating the supper room before twirling out onto the balcony, dancing and weaving and running around the tall scroll pillars.

Legolas leaned against another pillar that supported the archway, smiling. She looked like a goddess, with her jet black hair, now shot with gold, coiled and pinned atop her head in the current Greek fashion, and the pillowing folds of her pure white sleeveless _chiton_ and long-sided _ampechonion_- two long rectangles of fabric that reached from one wrist to the other, one in front of her and one at her back, then clasped at the shoulders and then let to hang loose. A girdle of woven golden rope was under her bosom, and a winding golden armband on her right upper arm. A matching one was on her left wrist and ankle.

As he watched, she twirled, the loose sides of her _ampechonion_ swirling around her as some of her hair escaped its pearl-tipped pins and curled around her face as she laughed.

Leather sandals slapping against the white marble stone, she stopped and ran to the low railing, breathing in deeply the tangy, salty sea air, her eyes sparkling with that same unnaturally potent life.

"Come look, Legolas! Come look!" She called him over, turning to look at him, smiling brightly.

Smiling himself, Legolas lifted the hem of his toga slightly as not to trip –give him Elvish breeches and a tunic any day!- and walked over to her. He put his arm around her and hugged her. She turned him and hugged him full around his waist.

"Will this do?" He asked in a teasing voice. Serenity laughed her 'yes' and leapt away to return to her joyous dancing. Another squeal of laughter joined Serenity's, and a cry of 'It's wonderful!' was followed by Legolas hearing the patter of small feet behind him.

He turned at the precise moment he needed to, and caught the small bundle that threw itself into his arms, squealing and blabbering with delight.

"Uncle Legolas, you're the best!" The girl with the long silky pitch black hair, antique rose roots near her scalp, and cinnamon eyes told him seriously, then grinned, kissed him on the cheek, and wiggled her way out of his grasp to dance with her mother.

Legolas watched the two with obvious enjoyment. They would need to dye little Usagi's hair again soon- pink hair was not common, and often looked upon with fear for being so close to the color so often associated with evil gods.

A chilly wind whipped up, and thunder boomed in the distance. For all the sun was shining, it was obvious a storm was nearing. Serenity swooped past Usagi and scooped her up into her arms. Usagi pouted and wiggled, but Serenity's hold was firm.

"Inside," she said.

"No!" Usagi wailed, pleading with her big starkissed eyes.

Serenity shook her head. "Storm is coming. Sorry, lovely." She kissed her daughter on her forehead, and as she headed inside, she looked at Legolas over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow.

"Coming?" She asked. Legolas nodded, and moved to follow, thinking with slight bewilderment how he'd never get used to how Serenity, when alone or with him or anyone else, she was as a child, but when her daughter was near, she was…a mother.

For all their hair and eye colors were radically different, Serenity was indeed the mother of the small child she was now carrying inside their new home- the resemblance in expressions and attitudes were too alike for them to be anything but mother and child.

"I take it this is a pleasant change from that Egyptian heat you were always complaining about?" Legolas asked with a raise of his eyebrow as they walked down the airy, open hallways to the enclosed part of the villa with far fewer windows than the rest of the dwelling for the very reason that was approaching them- storms.

"Much!" Serenity threw him a smile.

They came to a crossing of halls, and Serenity paused, Usagi cradled in her arms, suddenly looking very sleepy. She turned to him, and with wide, innocent eyes vacant of any knowledge of motherhood, she asked him. "Which way is my room?"

Barely flinching at yet another personality switch, Legolas, whom had been at the villa upon it's completion a month ago, guided her to the right. They went down a ways, and came to a room lavish with Persian rugs, golden mirrors from Egypt, a vanity of perfumed woods from the islands of Crete, bottles of perfumes from Asia on top of it as well as a small jeweled hand mirror from India. The bed was tall with four posters- the wood worker had given Legolas odd looks when he had handed him the sketches of the bed, but Legolas had ignored it. It was Elvish in design and quite unique, seeing as he was one of the very, very, very small number of elves left in the world.

Serenity went to the bed and laid her daughter down under the covers, tucking her in soundly.

"I'll have a bath sent in," Legolas told the girl as she began to hum as she sat at her vanity and set to taking out the pins in her hair, a dreamy look in her face.

Not sure if she had heard him or not, Legolas went to her and kissed her on the forehead. "I'll come check on you after supper," he told her in a kind voice, and left with one look over his shoulder to Serenity and Usagi, asleep in the bed.

Leaving, Legolas realized that he himself was rather weary from the month and a half journey from the mainland. Thus, Legolas decided to seek his own rooms after stopping by the servants quarters and greeting the persons there. When he left, he was smiling at the short encounter with the youngest maid.

_"I hope you don't expect us to do the slaves' work for them until they get there,"_ she had said stoutly.

Legolas had smiled an charmingly amused smile before replying. _"Of course not. All the work that needs to be done has been divided up among you, and you will all be paid adequately for each."_ Then, in case he hadn't been clear enough he added, _"There will be no slaves."_

That had surprised them well enough, he expected. With a small smile and the shake of his head, he entered his rooms and shut the door.

A bath had already been drawn, and as he soaked he let his thoughts wander over the past several thousand years. The last ship to Valinor had sailed long ago, but oddly enough Legolas didn't mind. Perhaps it was in the childish promise Serenity had made him, on the shores that time so long ago, that promise she had made, telling him he would see them someday again.

After that Serenity had pulled him north, simply telling him that they had to get there in time, they had to make sure they were where they needed to be. There had been something about her, Legolas remembered, something urgent that had made him agree to take her. And so they had gone, north, then east, then west, then west again, then south, then north once more. It was as if Serenity was looking for something. For five years they wandered the earth, seeking out every nook and cranny. Still Serenity didn't seem to find what she was looking for.

Another five years passed. By then she was showing- Legolas had first thought it his imagination when her belly had begun to grow swollen, slowly, over the years. But it had been true- Serenity had been pregnant, and was taking the span of ten years to show as much as a human woman showed after five months.

At last, they found a place that had Serenity dancing day and night, day and night… Her pregnancy sped up, and within a month she was as swollen as a woman with twins, at least that was how it appeared to be, compared to Serenity's slight frame. The midwives had told Legolas it would be a hard pregnancy and birth. Then a rosy-peach skinned babe had been born with a cap of fuzzy pink curls and large, curious, commanding cinnamon eyes, and neither she nor the mother had cried out once. The midwives had been baffled.

That had been a few hundred years ago, and still little Usagi bore the resemblance and personality traits of a five year old. Elves, too, aged slowly, but not quite this slowly. It only proved to confirm that Serenity was not as she seemed- an unusually beautiful human woman.

The bath had begun to grow cold, and Legolas detected a tantalizing scent nearing. He quickly rose, dried, and dressed in a simpler white tunic that went to his knees trimmed in a golden square pattern that matched the belt he fasted around his midriff. A knock sounded off from the other side of the door.

After the knocker, a maid bearing his dinner tray, had deposited her cargo and left, Legolas ate, then left to check on Serenity and Usagi once more before allowing himself to seek his own bed for the night, looking forward to the restful respite his people enjoyed when the walked in memory.

He was still a good distance away when he began to hear it; music. And certainly not any sort of music ever heard in Ancient Greece before now…

As he neared her rooms, he spotted a trio of maids standing around the door, and a few more a ways away, all wearing startled expressions on their faces.

Then Legolas paid attention to the music, and sighed. He was used to this- the service of this household were not. Giving the women a look that clearly meant 'move along' he pushed the door open and stepped inside. But he did not step into Serenity's room- no, he stepped into a large room filled with people, people in odd garb- for the females, especially odd, _tight_ garb. Although for as odd and alien the clothing was to him, he did recognize it from the many times this had happened before.

Sometimes, Serenity would dream so vividly, and some part of her, knowing it was only a dream, would long for it so strongly to be real that her power would attempt to grant her wish- creating an illusion. This was what surrounded Legolas –and somewhere in here, Serenity- nothing more than an illusion.

On the far side of a room there was a stage flooded with dark red and blue light, a singer screeching into a contraption that magnified his voice. Legolas winced and resisted the urge to cover his ears. The floors and walls thrummed and vibrated, and people laughed and shouted and danced in a way that was most unappealing to his Elvish tastes.

No one seemed to notice him. He glanced down at himself and raised one slender eyebrow. He, too, was now clad oddly. Well fitted –a little too well fitted for his preference- dark brown leather pants-unpolished, black boots, and a loose dark green dress shirt shot with gold thread that made the shirt two-tone under the ever wavering light.

He moved into the crowd, and people parted before him without hardly noticing him or noticing how they were making a way for him. He looked around, his Elvish eyes aiding him in his search. He spotted his quarry soon enough- Serenity was laughing on the far side of the room, dancing and twirling like the rest. Although, somehow, her movements managed to be both wild and chaotic and pure grace all at once.

He was pleased to see she wasn't dressed quite as scantily as most other women in the room, but neither, after a brief glance at her attire, did he let himself glance below her neck. A short white skirt that clung to and hugged her buttocks and went only two inches thereafter down her thighs adorned her lower body. A gold chain hung off her hip, made of linked crescent moons. Her top was near transparent, save for a slinky pale gold spaghetti strap top underneath the sheer, gauzy top with the full, flowing sleeves.

Serenity spotted him, and recognizition flitted across her face for a moment before replaced with idle curiosity. Legolas sighed. She didn't remember him, not quite. It had happened before. If nothing else he waited 'til she fell asleep- for to fall asleep in a dream –or illusion- was to awake in reality.

He leaned against one of the many thick support beams scattered among the room, only a few yards away. She was chatting amiably with a black haired man. His eyes were the deepest of blues, and Legolas recognized him from previous illusions as Serenity's husband, Endymion, or rather, as she knew him more recently, as Mamoru.

He also noticed, as Serenity did not –or refused to notice- that his eyes were blank. He wasn't there- not even in soul. This would be painful. Best get her out as soon as possible.

Legolas had only taken a step or two towards the dainty fairy of an princess when she looked at him sharply, eyes flashing a piercing gold as blue orbs were washed with a solid metallic silver.

"I can't leave," she whispered softly, yet he again was tempted to cover his ears at the power in that voice, that power held within the tone of a willful child. No one else heard.

"I have no choice but to lead you out, 'Renity," he replied her, voice soft as he took another step closer. This, too, had happened a few times before. He hoped the familiar shortening of her name would soothe her. Apparently, as she frowned harshly, it did not. Not this time.

"You don't understand," she told him, eyes flickering, softening, as did her voice. It was no longer that of a child. It was that of a queen.

"Then help me understand," Legolas noted that the world around them had frozen, silent, save for a low hum.

"You don't want to." She told him flatly. Her eyes were distant, now, as if she were seeing both him and…everything, all at once. And her demeanor portrayed it as if she did it on a regular basis. Legolas did his best not to be overly awed or impressed.

"Let me decide that," he responded to her statement.

"Very well," she said, suddenly all sunshine and laughter. Her face alighted with a wide smile, eyes dancing as the frozen world around them blurred, spun until Legolas had to close his eyes else risk becoming precariously dizzy. When he opened them, they were standing on the streets of a Greek city, the city bustling around them. A crier stood on a stone block, welcoming people- apparently they were near the city entrance. Legolas caught the name of their location- Ciph, a small province not far from their new home.

A small hand slipped into his, and Legolas looked down somewhat to his right to see Serenity, still clad in her white and gold dance getup.

"She's here," she whispered. "She will be." Her words were contradicting, first using present tense and then future.

"Who?" Legolas asked gently. Serenity turned big, wondering eyes up at him.

"She. The oldest of as all," she told him simply. "She was the first, and she will be the last." With that, she moved forward pulling him with her. In her other hand Legolas spotted a glimmer- it was the spike-star prism she always had with her. The prism that had been formed of the spirit crystals of those other beings that had protected her. When they had left her body, all that had remained was that crystal. Sometimes she hid it within herself, others she played with it, never once cutting herself on the razor edges of the spikes.

People laughed and danced and shouted and fought and ran all around them. It was truly a city- but there was something hanging over it all, something dreamlike which betrayed the illusionist taint to everything.

Serenity led him to a sand-turner shop, not much more than a stall, really. Crystal  hourglasses were on the hand-wrought shelves. A girl of no more than eighteen sat on a stool polishing a brass one that contained azure sand- powdered lapis lazuli, most likely. She accomplished the task with a leisure patience that Legolas knew to be uncommon among teens. Then again, these were different times. Times when humans were required to grow up quicker than they should have to.

Legolas looked to the knots on the girl's belt- she was unmarried.

Suddenly, beside him, Serenity released his hand and then clapped her own together and laughed gleefully, and swayed and raised her arms and danced a little in the street. Dust-devils rose and swirled around her as a wind picked up. As he watched, the wind turned to gold, then to water, then to blackness, then to smoke with licks of flame… Still she laughed, dancing like fire, giggling like the murmur of a creek.

Legolas threw one a glance to the hourglass girl, just as she looked up sharply and pinned him with a piercing cinnamon brown gaze. His breath caught in his throat, and Serenity laughed joyously, the sound of the laughter of a thousand children bubbling up from her throat. 

Then, all at once, the illusion shifted, blurred, then vanished all together, and Serenity was dancing in her night shift on the flagstone floor, laughing and singing sweetly. At once upon his reentry into reality, Legolas blinked, and wondered if he was still in a dream- the way everything was flowing, the way time slipped around him, he was suddenly so acutely aware of it all it was as if….it was…it was _unnatural_…

"Mama?" A small voice asked curiously. At once, Serenity's dancing slowed and then ceased as she made her way to her daughter's bedside.

"Yes, sweetling?"

"I had the dream again."

With those words, somehow, someway, a chill filled the room. 

Serenity picked up her daughter, the small child clinging to her mother. Serenity looked at Legolas, and their eyes met. With her daughter, something else had awoken while they had been walking the paths of illusions.

So swiftly that she managed to startle even Legolas somewhat, Serenity turned and sprinted from the room- he frowned as he saw the door open of it's own accord to admit her exiting.

Fleetly, Legolas followed the girl that was as his sister as she pranced swiftly down the open-air corridors, soaked within a few steps past the shielding stone walls.

To the balcony she fled, the one they had looked out at the ocean from earlier. Her clothes, near transparent from the rain, clung to her. Her long hair remained free of any dampness whatsoever and whirled about her wildly. Her eyes flashed silver, and an eight point white star on her forehead flared blindingly, the shards of light that lanced forth from the mark beginning to spiral around and around and around…

            Legolas stood among the pillars, gripping on as well as he might, frowning sharply as he stared with single-minded intensity at his charge. Whatever was happening, he knew he had no part in, knew he had to stay back, he could only watch. And so he watched.

            The storm that had been in the distance was now above them, around them. But even Legolas could see the one oddity- the storm was only over them. Nowhere else. At the edge of the circular cut of the land that had come with the villa, the storm clouds abruptly stopped, shadow was replaced with sunshine, rain with sweet air, the smell of lightning with the smell of sunlight.

            Legolas had seen Serenity summon a storm once before, when a good sized city in a kingdom that no longer existed had been in danger of being wiped out from famine. She had brought the rains, and they had left before they could either worship her or put her to death, whatever their decision would have been.

            Legolas had witnessed that working with awe, then worry as she had been not herself for days. But this, this storm, this was not her doing. Not by a long shot. Something had set it on them, like a master gave his hunting hound the scent of a particular quarry, and once the hound found that quarry it would focus on that prey and that prey alone.

            Standing amid swirling darkness, Serenity stood tall, seeming to reach the sky in her 4'5'' height. Usagi was on her mother's hip, their right and left arm wrapped around each other, their other right and left hands clasped up above them.

            This was new. Did Usagi have power, as well…? She had never displayed any. Legolas frowned. Or had she? The child seemed to love sleeping. He had always acquitted that to the fact she was a child and they traveled a lot. Only just then did he realize she had never had a nightmare in her life…

            Until now…

            And even then, she had been calm, as if she had been in control…

            Legolas remembered how nightmares had abounded when Serenity had been ill and fading away at Imladris, all that time ago.

            Was there a connection? 

            Leaving that question for pondering later, Legolas frowned as the storm seemed to intensify, as did the glow around the two girls. They were facing him, now, and Legolas could see that whatever the connection regarding the dreams, the child did have power- the flashing deep golden upturned crescent moon on her forehead was proof of that. The dye had been seared from her hair, and now the locks swirled around her small form and her mother's shoulders in a blur of deep rose pink. Her cinnamon eyes were laced with writhering gold.

            Their clasped hands, a daughter's within her mother's, raised high, were like intertwined suns. They nearly blinded the acutely envisioned elf.

            The two inhuman, non-elf, definitely non-dwarf females cried something that was either of no language he knew, or was so charged with power that even he could not decipher the syllables. A four beams of pure light, two silver, two gold, and a few smaller ones that were some shade in between, shot out horizontally from their hands, spiraled, then snapped upwards, joining together in one solid beam that all at once was tall enough to pierce the storm clouds above.

            Legolas narrowed his eyes as he scrutinized the point where the beam pierced the dark clouds. Was the beam…was the light…_sucking_ the storm clouds and rain and even the sound of thunder itself…_into_ the beam?

            The storm and winds and thunder and pounding rain all roared at once, gave one final lashing snarl in the form of a spike of lighting- but that, too, was assimilated into the beam of light. In fact, it seemed to strengthen the beam, which was a light gold in color.

            Finally, all at once, the last tendril of dark shadowy cloud was lapped up by the glow of light surrounding the golden pillar, and the light of the sinking sun washed over them once more.

            Serenity stumbled, and in a single bound he was next to her, steadying her. Usagi was asleep in her arms, breathing deep and evenly. Legolas turned Serenity's face up to look at him.

            "Are you all right?" He asked.

            "They found me…" she whispered. "They don't exist, and they still managed to find me…" Tears ran down her face, and she let out a single sob before she collapsed, unconscious, onto his chest and into his arms.

**_To Be Continued…_**

Blarg, so sorry for so long a wait. I was sick, behind in school, uncooperative friends, my job is looking unstable, and to top it off, I have no time for a much needed trip to the salon… .

Anyways, hope you enjoyed. A bit shorter than usual, but I think this was another one of those bothersome transition chapters. *sigh* I do wish one could find a way to bypass these… But there rather nessecary. Only thing to do is to try to get good at them… *looks hopeful* How am I doing?

Jusqu'à la prochaine fois, je vous remercie tout pour votre appui. (_Until next time, thank you all for your support.)_

Ja ne!

**_Hope Makes the Universe Shine,_**

_Makura Koneko_

**ALL STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY**


	4. Chapter Four: Senshi Pluto

**_Dream of Reality_**  
  
**Chapter Four**

  
  


by _Makura Koneko_

**Ciph, 334 BC**

_"The Priest will see you now," a novice priestess said, bowing to a woman with coiled black hair, a little girl beside her. The young priestess did not look at the child- marked by either a god or a demon, she was, to have eyes and hair like that. And that…that…presence…that aroma that reeked of something beyond mortal comprehension. An aura that said 'I know something you don't.' It made the priestess shiver._

_ She led woman and child into the innermost sanctum, where the priest and his apoclates were murmuring incantations and offering tributes of wine and fruit. They stood and waited while they finished, the woman and priestess going down on their knees, foreheads pressed to the ground in the presence of the great statue of the god of time, the god's physical embodiment on earth. It was said that when his wrath was great, he would fill the mere stone with his power and come alive in it. No one wished to cur that anger._

_But the little girl, the priestess saw with wide-eyed surprise, did not bow or kneel, nor even incline her head. She stared at the great, handsome stone face with utter fascination._

_"Mama, that's him." She said simply, her voice breaking through the soft murmurs of prayers and incantation reciting. Many eyes turned towards her, many lips faltered with surprise at the unexpected noise in the usually silent sanctum._

_The woman trembled, and tugged at the hem of her daughter's clothing.  
            "Get down, 'Rotosa, least you be struck by wrath of our patron god! Do you wish to encur his disfavor over us?" The mother's voice was pleading. "Do you want him to bring his stone body to life and smite you down for your disrespect?"_

_The priests and apoclates watched, wanting to know if the foolish young girl would realize the error of her mistake and repent._

_"Silly mama," the girl said, speaking almost as if one would to an overimaginitve child. "He's the one who talks to me." She paused as if considering something, then burst out laughing. "And besides," she giggled, ruby eyes dancing. "He says he hates the feel of stone. If he were to come down her, he'd much rather just form a body of his own."_

_The silence was eminent. The Ciph Priest of Chronos came forward, looking the child in the eye. Even though he was looking down at her, he shivered slightly under his robes as he realized it felt like as if he should be bowing to her…this child…this child that apparently shared a real link with something above mortal concept. It was then that he felt the first spark of jealousy that would eventually flare into full-fledged hatred._

_"Does she speak the truth, my lord Priest?" The novice priestess blurted out. The Priest gave her a scathing look._

_"She is but a child," he said, forcing aside the scornful tone in favor of a mildly amused one. He ruffled her hair as if showing affection for a silly girl. "She has been playing in the sun too often. You would do well, mistress, to keep your daughter indoors more often. Engage her in more earthly matters, so that she may come to be wise in leaving things of the holy to those whom are trained to interpret the gods' will."_

_"He doesn't like you, you know," Ambrotosa, the little girl, said with an innocent sort of curiosity in his voice. "He told me to tell you that if you don't 'shut that chabbering trap of a useless, lying mouth,' and start to repair all the lies you've ever spread in his name to further yourself, he'll shut it for you."_

_"You little brat," the old priest hissed. "How dare you play at things you have no compreh--" The Priest's voice was abruptly cut off and fell into a chocking gurgle. All looked on as again and again he tried to speak, but all he managed was an increasingly raspy and dry choke and gurgle. Rage filled his expression, and he motioned wildly. It would take a minute before his apoclates got the message and moved towards Ambrotosa and her mother, ceremonial daggers draw. But by then the mother had snatched her child and ran for her life and the life of her child._

**Ciph, 341 BC**

The woman smiled mirthfully as she briefly remembered that day, so long ago. Twelve years, to the day, in fact. She was known for her uncanny ability of keeping impeccable track of time in her mind.

Ambrotosa of Ciph, the only unmarried daughter of Thyestese the hourglass maker, had just sold the last sand-turner –an ebony and silver creation of her own- and was closing up shop when she felt the oddest sensation. It was a sensation she'd felt all her life, but with increasing frequency in the last year of her life. 

She listened to it for a moment, but when it faded away without telling her anything, she knew all was well. For sometimes, the sensation brought to her instructions, whispers of what was to come, what had to come, and what shouldn't come in the near future. It told her what events to stop, what to encourage. She never understood it, only knew from experience that whenever she ignored it, bad things happened and suddenly everything felt so, so wrong until she fixed it.

She'd told her mother, once, and she had insisted on taking Ambrotosa to the nearby temple of Chronos, the family patron god. Ambrotosa smiled at the memory. Thing's hadn't gone nearly as neither her mother nor anyone else had thought or anticipated. That Priest was still the head Priest, of course, he had too much power to be unseated merely because of the loss of his voice.

The story had gone out that one of his students had displeased Chronos greatly, and rather than let one of his precious students go crippled for life, he'd pleaded for Chronos to grant him the punishment instead, since his life was near an end, anyways. Supposedly, seeing that his Priest could speak for him just as well without his voice as with, so talented was he, that he agreed.

The public had eaten it up, and Ambrotosa nor he family had done nothing to counter it. Of course, that hadn't done anything to curb the voiceless Priests' hatred for Ambrotosa. It was because of him that she remained unmarried, no one wanting to earn the wrath of a major god and his priest by courting the beautiful woman. No one knew why the man hated the exotic female so passionately, but the rumor was that he was sore and spiteful at her for perhaps turning him down. While discouraged, it wasn't rare for priests to take wives or mistresses, the latter being more common.

Ambrotosa didn't particularly care. She had a calling, one that would scarcely allow her to tend to the duties of being a wife and mother. For a calling it was, she was sure of it. Chronos, her family's patron god, had chosen her to help him keep the flow of time flawless and straight. What other explanation was there for it?

Ambrotosa smiled, suddenly, walking down the darkening street. There it was again, that sensation. It had never come more than once in a single day, before. What was it? She stood still and listened, waiting for instructions…but they didn't come. Instead…just a feeling of something…something big about to happen, soon. Something to do with…_her_?

Yes, she knew with surprise. Whatever was going to happen tonight, she would be at the center of it. But what was it? She closed her eyes and delved further into the sensation that was her personal link to time and space. What was going to happen?

A flash of an image, a smooth round crystal, deep burgundy in color, containing a symbol in deep, deep purple. A symbol that was familiar to her, like an old friend, forgotten…

At the words 'forgotten' and 'friend' Ambrotosa gasped as another image came to mind- a smiling goddess. For what else could this female in her mind's eye be? The image was gone, but she could clearly remember long hair of milky, liquid silver, completely weightless, like a dream. Eyes filled with every good thing in existence, all of it shadowed by a sheen of darkness. Skin as pale as the silver-golden moon, lips as red as blood. And over it all, two markings on her forehead, fighting for domination.

There was a connection, she knew as she moved on. She just had to figure it out. She had to find out how that crystal and that woman and herself and tonight all fit together. The sense of urgency was growing, but she wasn't sure if it stemmed from the sensation, or from her need to get home before dark. The latter, she decided, for not only was it nearing sunset (a dangerous time to be out in any city) but also because her mother, she knew, had been laboring over the stove and loom and housework all day, for tonight was Ambrotosa's birthday, at midnight exactly she would be eighteen summers of age.

Excited despite herself, Ambrotosa walked faster.

_"Ooohlwher come untinead…"_

She danced.

_"Callminai, maidniblood rohn…"_

She sang.

Serenity's voice blended, one word into the other until it was an indecipherable strong of melodies and soul-rendering siren songs. Legolas had hardly heard such a lovely language. He'd once asked her about it, and she'd said it was the language of time. She said, to be spoken, it was harsh and hard. But when sung…

Well, he was hearing the evidence for himself as he leaned against a pillar, watching her sway and skip and sweep her arms up above her, her hands slipping down over her own arms and face and neck, swirling around her amidst her gold and ebony clouds of hair as if she were made of boneless mist, a dreamlike spirit. The beauty of her dances and voice never ceased to amaze him.

The next minute the song and dance began to change. Legolas frowned as he sensed and saw and heard an urgency she'd never danced or sang with before. It was almost painful to watch as her spinning became faster and faster, her singing an almost bloodcurdling sob of moans and calls, raw emotion pouring from her throat to wrap around anything nearby that had any life in it at all.

As the Elven prince watched with growing alarm, black smoke began to stream out from her dancing, silver mist swirling upwards around her, a golden glow pulsing through the thin veil of her topmost layers of flesh.

Still she sang and danced. Her feet were bloody, her hair suddenly tangled.

"Enough of this…" Legolas murmured, moving forward to stop her, to do what he could against whatever demon had ensnared her footsteps.

Abruptly and completely without warning, a flare of light burst forth from the ends of her fingertips, toes, her eyes, nose, mouth, ears, as if a light inside her and been trying to find an outlet for the longest time and finally just burst forth from her wherever it could…like her heart was shining like a sun…

Legolas flung up an arm to shield his face even as he braced himself against the wind. He prepared himself to move forward against the light, wondering all the while what was happening this time- the girl was as unpredictable as the ocean, and could be just as gentle or violent. It seemed almost as thought such things as this had become commonplace, for they no longer surprised him.

Just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone. Serenity stood there, hair loose, a gentle –natural- wind blowing around her as she hummed a soft little melody, sweetly murmuring the words under her breath. She smiled softly, her eyes closed as she raised her hand. Hovering just above it was the spike-star rainbow crystal she was never without. Legolas stood there, just watching, hands on a small dagger he kept on his person at all times.

Serenity opened her eyes, and he drew in a sharp breath- here was something he would never become accustomed to. The way, when she worked her magic, or was entranced, or in the throw of another illusion, her eyes would turn so transparent they were silver, filled with ghosts and spirits of memories long past, glittering with the stars of the entire universe held within those silver depths. It was the eyes that had first entranced him so long ago in the bowels of Barad-dur.

"Legolas," her voice echoed all around him, as if they were underneath an invisible glass dome. He found, suddenly, that beyond the balcony railing, the world seemed to dim in color. Only she stood out, brilliant as a polished gem among soot. She turned those galaxy-orb eyes to him, smiling radiantly, so beyond anything he'd ever seen in her fearsome beauty. What was it, he wondered, that could make her so?

He came to her, unafraid.

"Look," she told him, her voice that of a thousand in one. It practically glittered, just like the rest of her. Legolas looked to where she nodded, and gazed into the many faceted depths of the crystal, spinning ever so slowly. In it he saw an exotically beautiful woman he'd never seen- wait, yes he had!

Nearly a year ago, had walked into Serenity's room and stepped right into one of her illusions, an illusion of the life she had left behind in her self inflicted dream-world while under Sauron's control. Everything had gone normally- he had tried to coax her out, she had refused to acknowledge that the illusion wasn't real. But then things had changed…

She'd spoken cryptically of a woman, the woman in the crystal. Something about how she was both the first and the last of 'them.' Legolas looked at Serenity and wondered, not for the first time, if she had meant that there were more like her. The thought was both daunting and awe-inspiring.

Legolas moved around in front of Serenity. Her right arm, held out in front of her, was between them as he placed his hands on her shoulders and forced himself to look into those eyes.

"Renity, who is she? Is she like you?"

"'We are all alike in one way or another,' said the dragon to the unicorn. 'For do we not all of us beasts have horns and eyes and blood that can poison?'"

"Does that mean that everyone can do what you can do if they learn?" He asked.

"The difference between stars and planets is not size or chemical composition," Serenity, said. For all she was looking at him, he couldn't tell if she was talking to him. "It is in how brightly they shine on the darkest of nights."

"I don't understand, Serenity," Legolas told her softly. "I know you're trying to tell me something, but what?"

"Knowledge is the greatest weapon," she said, sounding like she was quoting something. Her lips quirked wryly as her gaze turned once again down to the crystal hovering above her palm, the face of the emerald green haired, ruby eyed, bronze-skinned woman still reflecting off every facet.

"But it is a double sided weapon," Serenity added, her voice barely above a whisper. Her hand began to tilt. She began to sing again, softly, just her voice, none of the usual nonexistent music that seemed to always accompany her singing and dancing. Just her voice.  
            "Twinkle, twinkle, little star…" her hand titled further. The crystal slid. "How I wonder where you are…" The crystal slipped off her hand. Legolas watched, unmoving, simply watching.

The crystal hit the stone pavement, and shattered.

The party had been going on for an hour when it happened. The get together, consisting of family, friends, and a few of Ambrotosa's father's successful friends (all of whom had eligible, unmarried sons) had been a delightful success. The few gifts had been thoughtful and valuable to Ambrotosa, the food succulent and delicious. Ambrotosa had been having a marvelous time.

Until it happened.

The sensation, stronger than ever, overwhelmed her to the point where she had to lean against the wall to keep from falling over. She excused herself from the person she was talking to, her cousin, complaining of perhaps too much wine, and stumbled from the room, through the hall, and out into the garden where she collapsed behind a line of shrubs. Her world was spinning, spinning, around and around. She felt sick, nauseous. But it wasn't the normal illness…

No, it was like the time she had been told her parents were dead, when it had been believed that their ship had been lost at sea, a time long ago when her father had decided to try his hand at trading at distant ports. It was the nauseous feeling that came with knowing something was missing…something horribly, horribly essential. A longing so intense it threatened to overwhelm the senses and make someone go mad.

Ambrotosa tried so, so hard to try and remember what it was she was missing. When she found it, it scared her beyond belief. It was her memories themselves that were missing- no, not missing, jumbled up, confused, mixed. All the memories featured her, just the same, yet different.

She had images of her surrounded by corpses, a long tall staff shaped like a key in her hand, her skin-tight clothing blood soaked as tears streaked down her face, blaming herself…

More images of herself in a radiant gown, laughing and dancing amid crystal pillars, a familiar symbol on her forehead…

More images, again in that skin-tight outfit, with the key, standing guard at a grand doorway, a gate. She was older…so old, and yet so young. So angry, and yet so alone…

More images, laying in the arms of a man in a violet suit, breathing her last, seeing a woman, a radiant woman, a goddess of gold and silver… Another woman, so alike to the first and yet so reeking of so many emotions, two crystals held in her hand…

More images, from her life here in Ciph…

More images, in a room with strange things of metal and stone and some substance she did not recognize, touching buttons on a slab in front of her as images appeared on a glass screen before her, dressed in a white rob.

More images, more images, more images… Gowns and parties and crystals, battles and blood and fighting, strange things, monsters, strange clothing…

And throughout it all, a goddess…an angel…a guardian…a princess…

_Princess…_

_…Princess…_

_……Princess.……_

"Princess," Ambrotosa breathed, eyes shut tight, curled up in a ball. "I remember you, princess… I remember you…but nothing else…" Tears streaked down her face as she fought to remember something that was a part of her, a part of her soul… "I want to remember…" she said through gritted teeth. "I want to remember who I am…"

The sensation wracked her body, even as more images flashed through her mind, out of order, jumbled up. Images of things that had happen, were going to happen, should have happened, weren't supposed to happen, couldn't happen, had to happen…

Ambrotosa screamed.

Serenity screamed, a golden string of song wrapping around her cry, spiraling up and around everything that could hear. She shut her eyes tight, palms shoved down towards the pile of shattered, glittering crystal. The shards began to pulse, glow, shine, flash…

Then a beam of flawless burgundy, garnet-colored light shot upwards. Serenity lashed out her hand, into the beam, cutting it off. The beam pushed up against her hand. Serenity fought it, forcing it down. The bottom end of the beam raised itself up away from the shards. Serenity fell to her knees, her top hand pressing the top of the beam down, down with all her might as her other hand slipped under the bottom of the beam, pushing up.

Legolas wanted to help, but he knew that to touch that raw power would mean death, himself, Serenity, and whoever owned that garnet light. For it was not Serenity's. Somehow, he knew this to the depths of his soul.

He couldn't help…

Or could he?

He went behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders, and just like he had at Barad-dur, shoved with all his might, all his strength and power into her. He felt her grab at it, almost greedily in her haste, channeling it down her arms to her hands. With that burst of strength, her hands slammed together with a sharp snap, like the sound of glass being snapped in half, cracked, splintered. The sound of falling shards of glass and crystal hitting a metal surface filled his ears.

"Bring her to me!" Serenity cried at the top of her lungs, leaping to her feet in and thrusting the little ball of light in her hand, glowing burgundy-garnet, upwards with all her might, all in one fluid motion before promptly collapsing. Legolas caught her.

The round, purple-garnet crystal flew away, shooting in an upwards arch, leaving a red streak behind it in the sky.

"Bring me my Pluto…my Guardian…" she took in a shuddering gasp of air, her entire body trembling with fatigue. "Bring me my Time Guardian…" She closed her eyes.

Legolas was worried for a moment, before realizing she wasn't asleep nor dead, just resting. He held her close, cradling the head of the girl he considered a little sister in the crook of his shoulder and arm, brushing her hair out of her face. He let his eyes wonder to where the shards of the crystal lay.

He wondered, what did that mean? What would happen now? He was sure the crystal being broken like that couldn't be a good thing, for all it had apparently freed whatever power would bring her one of her guardians. Now a little bit of the events of the past made sense.

The stars containing the souls of her guardians, mother, lover, daughter, daughter's guardians, and teachers had been too much for her body to contain, back in Imladris, he realized. He had always suspected as much, but somehow this seemed to confirm it. He had suspected that her words 'I will find you' had had everything to do with this trek across the world, and now it was confirmed.

But did that mean that the rest of them would never be found, now that the crystal was broken?

Legolas turned his gaze to stare out to see, unconsciously shivering at the sight of it. Somehow Serenity had blocked the madness Galadriel had once promised him would come with the nearness of it. He felt perfectly sane. A notion came to Legolas as he looked down at Serenity's sleeping face.

What if _Serenity_ was the madness that was to come to him near the sea? It was a confusing notion that made no sense whatsoever, yet he knew it was an idea that would continue to plague him until he worked it out.

Before he could think on it further, though, his gaze was caught by a glitter just beyond the edge of his vision. He glanced up, and drew in a sharp breath, eyes widening of surprise.

The crystal was pulsing, the shards melting and running towards each other, like a puddle of liquid rainbows… He couldn't help but notice that out of all the colors that rainbow had once possessed, burgundy-garnet was not among them.

Ambrotosa- no, Pluto? Setsuna? Trista? What was her name? She clutched her head as bolts of electric pain shot through her mind as she tried so, so hard to remember…

She felt it before she saw it, and even then she didn't really register it, so caught up was she in her collage of memories, until it was right in front of her, it's brilliant glow shinning through her shut eyelids to burn into her eyes. Those same eyes snapped open, staring, entranced, into the depths of the perfectly round, polished stone of a deep red-purple color. In its center pulsed a symbol of the deepest of purples. It called to her, and, wide eyed, she felt something on her forehead form, emerging as if from a long, long sleep, pulsing in sync with the mark within the crystal orb, the size of an infant's fist.

Slowly, she realized the pain was gone, and steadily her memories were falling neatly into place as she reached for the orb, reaching, slowly, tentively…

Her fingertips brushed the glossy surface…

Everything snapped into place.

Setsuna smiled widely, laughing as she took her crystal in her hand, pulling herself to her feet and raising it to the sky.

"Pluto! Eternal! Crystal! Power!" She called with all her might in a language long forgotten. Those inside heard her call borne on the winds of time and space, and came pouring out of the house just in time to see her raised up on invisible wings, twirling and swaying in the air with the song of time. Light and ribbons of magic swirled around her as she laughed and danced upon time with joy.

In a brilliant flash of light laced with potent happiness and song and memories, the light display was over, and the Guardian of Time floated there on wings made of glittering gossamer red smoke, as insubstantial as the mist of the plane of the Gate of Time. Her suit was the deepest of blacks, the skirt the same color as her eyes- deep purple-red, and split in the front. Thigh-high black boots gave her shapely legs a seductive allure.

The ends of the ribbons of the bow on her chest were lengthened to loop back around behind her, up to the back of a black ribbon chocker at her throat. From there the ribbons became a length of cloth that formed an lustrous cape. Corners on each side of the cloak were long enough so that they were tied to rings around her middle fingers, forming a wrap around cloak.

"Mother, father," Senshi Pluto said softly, touching down to the ground, her tall Time Key Staff in her left hand. Her Garnet orb atop it shimmered in the moonlight, as did her Pluto Crystal, imbedded in the back of the black glove-gauntlet on her right hand.

No words were exchanged as Pluto looked into the eyes of the two people that had raised her. Somehow, they understood.

Pluto gripped her staff with both hands and raised them high.

"Take me to Serenity!" She cried.

With a whirlwind of black smoke and purple light, her bidding was done, and Ambrotosa's thread in the tapestry of life flickered, and died, as another one just beside it, once dark and dull, that of Setsuna, shimmered and glowed brightly once more.

As Legolas still yet only watched, the liquid rainbow before him molded itself, formed, raised itself, quivering in its liquid form. He was not surprised when a glow the same color as the crystal that had flown away only moments before formed on the other side of the floating globe of molten rainbow.

The glow grew and lengthened, formed and solidified into that of the woman he had seen, wearing a most odd sort of uniform. She smiled at him.  
            "You kept your promise," she said, her voice wise beyond her years- appearance wise. Legolas saw something her eyes that he'd only seen in one other person. Galadriel. A sort of ageless understanding, the look of someone that has seen everything yet nothing.

He only nodded. "I've done my best," he told her, recognizing that she had been among them that had bade him protect their princess til they could return to take up that task themselves once more.

The woman knelt, and placed a hand under the crystal. It quivered one last time, then solidified into a glittering, brilliant heart, glowing a soft golden color. She reached out her hand, held it over Serenity, just above where her heart would be, and released it. The heart-shaped crystal sank down, and disappeared within the depths of Serenity's flesh and soul.

Following that, the woman lifted her right hand, and Legolas spotted the round crystal Serenity had drawn forth from the shattered spike-star crystal. The woman laid her staff down between them, and hovered her free hand over the small round crystal on the back of her right hand. Out from it rose a sprinkling of golden light, almost pixie-ish in it's twinkling prettiness.

"Go home, little one." The woman murmured to it. "You have done your job." Almost laughing, the little light danced to Serenity, where it swirled around her head, swirling, swirling, swirling… Slowly, it began to dissipate, being absorbed by the golden moon mark on Serenity's forehead. The mark glowed softly, for a moment, when the last of the light was gone.

As they waited a moment, the woman looked up and met Legolas's eyes.

"You are Pluto," he said. She nodded.

"You remember."

"I remember all of it," he told her honestly. Pluto smiled slightly.

"You have fulfilled your promise, you know," she told him. "I am with her, now. You are no longer obligated to stay."

Legolas's lips quirked. "Even if I wanted to go anywhere, lady, where would I go to?"

"You know the answer to that," Pluto said. "Serenity once told you that when you wanted to, she could send you to the land of your people across the sea. You know very good and well that you can go to them whenever you like, that she would not deny you. You have fulfilled your promise, Prince of Mirkwood. Will you leave now?"

No more words were said on that subject on account of Serenity opening her eyes, eyes that were back to normal. Eyes, Legolas saw, that were a little lighter, a little saner, eyes that had lost just a little bit of the shadow glazed over all the joy hidden within her soul. She smiled a smile that was a little more aware, just ever so slightly not as childishly dreamlike as she turned her head to look at the emerald haired woman clad in black, red, and purple.

"Setsuna…" Serenity whispered, holding out her hand. The woman took the hand, clasping it in both her hands as she knelt there. She bent her head over the pale, slender white one in her own, and kissed it lovingly, sisterly before clasping it to her heart.

"I renew my vow to you, princess," the garnet-eyed warrior said reverently. "To never leave your side, to guard you whenever possible, to whenever it is allowed put you before my duty as Guardian of Time, to aid you in whatever quest you may venture on. Is my vow accepted, highness?"

"Accepted with the highest possible love and gratitude," Serenity said softly, tears in her eyes. She launched herself with what little strength she had left into the woman that was like an aunt to her, sobbing.  
            "Oh, Sets, I can't believe your back!" Serenity cried, sobbing. Pluto rocked the small woman, rubbing her back.

"I'm here, Usa-chan, I'm here…ssh, I'm here…" Her eyes met those of Legolas, and she knew the answer to her earlier offer. She smiled. "We're both here, child, and soon, we'll all be here, just like before…and once we are, we'll never leave again."

            "Promise?" Serenity sniffed. Pluto and Legolas's eyes met over the head of the moon princess, and both smiled. Legolas laid a hand on Serenity's shoulder.

            "Promise," he told her, and she began to cry anew.

**_To Be Continued…_**

Ta-da!

*collapses onto couch, breathing heavily* Phew!!!! So sorry this took forever to get out, guys! I seem to have the most rotten luck with chapters…they're always getting lost or deleted… blarg, but I found it! Here ya go! Critique welcome, provided it has a basis and its pointless accusation, assumptions, etc.

And, WAHOO I'm back from Mexico!!!! Yay! Go me! I should have some pics posted on my website, reeeeeeally soon. I'm still looking for a pic that can be used to make a layout for a page on my site to host this story. If anyone is interested in trying their hand at drawing me one (a sketch, full pic, actual layout, anything will do) please e-mail me. My e-mail addy is on my author's page.

And now, my darling public, my astronomy homework awaits me…

**Hope Makes the Universe Shine,**

_Makura Koneko_


	5. Chapter Five: CurseFire

**_Dream of Reality_**  
  
**Chapter Five**

  
  


by _Makura Koneko_

**Toirhart Estates, 1504**

Elizabeth watched her betrothed with a loving air. They sat at the table in the main room of her father's small house, waiting for their parents to finish signing the betrothal papers in her father's study. Once that was done they would come out, where she and her fiancé – Alexander of Toirhart- would sign the contract, and he would give Elizabeth, a blonde haired, cornflower eyed beauty an amber pendant as a symbolic way of showing he would always provide for her.

He was so patient, she thought, watching him calmly run a hand through his hair. She, on the other hand, was murdering the ribbons that fell forward out of her hair to spill into her lap among the locks of radiant gold. Normally, she was clad in a simple cotton working dress. But today, she was dressed in a radiant cream colored gown, embroidered with doves, made from fabric and ribbon Lady Toirhart had deemed too pale a shade for herself and had given Elizabeth as a gift. Unadorned, her face unmarked by cosmetics, she was by far lovelier than any noblewoman Alexander had ever seen, as he was constantly telling her, and she supposed he had seen plenty in his traveling days as the son of a wealthy merchant.

 Elizabeth was the youngest daughter of the steward of the Lord of Toirhart, thus they had a pleasant sized cottage near the heart of Lord Toirhart estates. 

_"It is lucky for me,"_ Alexander often said with a smile_. "That Lord Toirhart's son has nothing but a friendly interest in my beautiful girl. But I suppose, having grown up together you two feel nothing more than sibling-esq love. Lucky, indeed, else I know I never would have stood a chance."_

She would always reply by telling him she would have gone off and married him anyways, even if her father had chosen Darius, Toirhart's son, over her.

Thinking of potentially loosing her fiancé made Elizabeth remember a particular occurrence in her life as of late, and she frowned. Her frown deepened as she saw Alexander absently, as she watched, stick his finger in his mouth, drawing it out coated in saliva and pass that finger back and forth through the tall flame of the tapered beeswax candle on the table.

"Don't do that." Elizabeth reached out and caught his wrist, keeping it from making another pass.

Alexander looked at his golden haired betrothed with confusion, then the confusion cleared to understanding, and he nodded and turned their hands over so he could lay a gentle kiss on her palm.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's just… You, and fire…" she said. Her smile faltered, as did his words when that image, that memory flashed up in his mind…

"It's alright," he told her, understanding and patience and love threaded in each syllable. His voice was soft- he knew she was remembering the incident two years before, when she had lost her first beloved to a forest fire.

She was saved from further painful memories by the entrance of their parents and Lord Toirhart, his son Darius, and a young village woman Elizabeth was on friendly terms with. No one else had been available to sign the witness contract. Even then, the woman –Seraphina- had signed in her father's name, as women were not encouraged to be witnesses in any legal affair.

"It is done," the Steward of Toirhart announced, smiling at his youngest as the blonde beauty flung herself up from her chair and into her fathers arms, laughing gaily. Alexander stood just in time to catch the enthusiastic woman as she dived into his arms. She pulled away just as quickly, standing straight and smoothing her hair.

"Well?" She asked, grinning. "Come on, let us make it official, beloved of mine!"

Alexander, returning her grin –how he loved her spirit!- he pulled a small package from his pocket, wrapped in a square of delicate silk –a scrap from his mother's wedding gown. He unwrapped it, and on the silk, laying in his palm, lay a teardrop amber pendant on a delicate golden chain. He lifted it from his hands, and clasped it around her neck, drawing her into his embrace. She had tears in her eyes as she flung her arms around him…

She never saw the long gauzy sleeve of her gown fly out over the table…

Flutter tantalizingly close to the candle flame…

Seraphina's eyes widened as she gasped- only she saw the flame _leap from the candlewick the scant inch between itself and Elizabeth's sleeve to engulf the highly flammable fabric, scorching up her arm to catch her golden hair. Elizabeth screamed, Darius ran to a vase filled with flowers, dumped out the flowers, and run back to douse it over Elizabeth's head and arm._

But it was too late, Seraphina and the adults saw as the flames had already caught the rest of the gown and the table. Lord Toirhart ran, shouting he would sound the fire alarm. Alexander had Elizabeth down on the floor, rolling her around.

"Stop that, you idiot, not on the wood!" Seraphina snapped over the screams, yanking them both up and running for the door. Out they flew, and she cast Elizabeth to the dirt, herself after her, rolling them both around in the dirt til the flames were out. As soon as they fires were snuffed, Alexander and Seraphina hauled each other up and away from the house as the peasants of the nearest village arrived with buckets, pouring in through the gates of Toirhart Keep, forming a line from the cottage to the nearest wells and water troughs.

            Looking over their shoulders as they collapsed by the aforementioned well, Seraphina's eyes were grim- the house was engulfed in flames. The fire must have found a few lamps or more fabric to have spread so quickly. The wood of the cottage, old and dry, burnt quickly and almost smokelessly.

Seraphina looked down at Elizabeth and the burnt remains of her gown and hair to assess the damage to the bride. The left side of her face was blackened, but would heal without scaring if properly cared for. Her hand and arm was another matter, but at least that could be easily concealed. It was the girl's heart Seraphina was suddenly worried for as she took in the way the girl refused all comfort from both her betrothed and the friends and family that rushed to her side. As if she were afraid of them.

Seraphina knew the girl well enough to know that while she was a bit vain, it was not the knowledge of what she must look like that kept others away. No, it was something else.

Seraphina remembered how the candle flame had unnaturally leaped to Elizabeth's sleeve.

Or rather, to Elizabeth herself.

Glancing around a bit hesitantly, Seraphina gave into the temptation and the sudden curiosity, the need to know, and opened her senses. She closed her eyes, and then when she opened them again and looked to the house, she drew in a sharp breath and stiffened at the sight of the sickly green-yellow edge the flames now bore.

She knew curse-fire when she saw it, and the cottage was most definitely aflame with no normal fire, but with fire that had been tainted with a command borne of the black arts. And judging from Elizabeth's reaction, she knew this as well as Sera did. She probably knew the reason, too, and Seraphina felt the tingling edge of curiosity. She shoved it aside.

With sudden desiciveness, Seraphina swooped down on the smaller, younger, distraught girl and grabbed her good arm and hauled her up.

"No, no, leave me, leave me!" Elizabeth sobbed, shoving away. Alexander glared at her. Seraphina glared right back.

"If you don't want to get sick and die, you need to come with me so we can clean and bandage those burns, child," she growled,

"It would be better for everyone I care about if I died!" She buried her face in her hands with no regard to the blood and puss that oozed from many popped blisters already forming.

"Don't be stupid," Seraphina snapped. She leaned close, and hissed, "I can help you, if you let me."

Elizabeth's head snapped up, and somehow she knew that the black haired, golden eyed woman didn't just mean her wounds. Sniffling, suddenly hopefully, she nodded, her good eye bright with hope and tears as she let the older woman lead her, limping painfully, towards the main house.

"Stay here and help," Seraphina commanded Alexander. With a glance at Elizabeth, who nodded, he hesitantly nodded back and joined the line of water-bucket passers.

When they were halfway to the house, Darius came running up, and without hesitation swooped Elizabeth er up into his arms, the right, unburned side of her body against his and his arms careful of her burns as he carried her gently as he could to the house and up a flight of stairs to a large, but simple room. He laid her, clothes and all, in a porcelain tub filled with cold water and smelling strongly of aloe-vera and various herbs.

"The servants began preparing several of these baths and many ointments as soon as they heard of the fire," tall, dark, black haired, indigo eyed Darius informed Seraphina. She nodded, taking in the small wicker basket of bandages and ointments on a chair.

"I'll take care of her," she told Toirhart's son. "You can go." Darius glanced at Elizabeth, obviously in great pain.

"Take care of her," he told her tensely, before nodding curtly and striding from the room. Seraphina glanced after him with the barest touch of wristfulness. The woman that snagged him would be lucky indeed, she knew.

"H-how can y-you hel-help me?" came the soft, heart-breakingly sad voice from behind. Seraphina's thoughts snapped back to the present and she went and knelt beside the tub, pulling the basket off the chair and to her.

"Your wounds first," Seraphina told her firmly. "Then I'll see what I can do about this fire-curse of yours. Meanwhile," she said, opening a small jar of ointment and scooping up a clear, slightly green tinged glob on her fingers. "Meanwhile why don't you tell me what you know about it?"

Although it pained her, and blood seeped from the burnt cracks at the corner of her mouth, Elizabeth talked steadily as Seraphina applied the medicine to the burns on her face, using a small pair of shears to cut away hair where she needed to in order to get to some burns further up in her scalp.

"I was barely fourteen," Elizabeth stated softly. "I had these friends… Long story short, I tried to set them up together. I thought they were perfect for one another… But he, the man involved, loved me instead. I kept misinterpreting his signs and tokens, I thought they were intended for her, thinking he was giving them to me knowing I would pass them to her… I got her to fall in love with him, thinking she had a chance… Things finally came to a head when," she winced when Seraphina snipped away a particularly large chunk of her hair. "When we went to a party… I had hinted it would be the perfect time to propose. Apparently he thought so too… So I left my friend alone, so he could find her and propose in private… But instead he sought me out. I…turned him down. He wasn't happy." She swallowed. "I guess he'd been dabbling in a few…things that we didn't know about. He grabbed one of the candelabra stands on the terrace, and threw it at me, screaming that he hoped fire and pain and death would follow me and all my loved ones wherever I went…"

Her voice faded as Seraphina wrapped lengths of white gauze around her head and neck, leaving her right eye and nose and mouth free of the white bandaging.

Seraphina was quiet for a moment.

"Did he say any incantation?" She asked. Elizabeth made a negative noise in the back of her throat. "I see." She sighed, thinking. If his, that foolish man's, emotion had been powerful enough to curse her without the aid of a verbal spell, it would be harder to eradicate.

"Well," she said, standing. "I'll see what I can do. Now up, and let's get the rest of you bandaged so I can go find a friend that should be able to help."

Painfully, though not as much so as before, Elizabeth rose out of the water, and Seraphina set to helping her off with the remains of her gown so she could bandage the rest of her, thinking all the while, _"What have I gotten myself into?"_

"Mil'oira…" Serenity breathed, taking in the sight before her, hanging from the canopy over her bed.

'Mil'oira,' Legolas had learned a few hundred years ago, was an exclamation, one used to express extreme surprise and delight. He and Setsuna exchanged grins. It had been worth all the trouble to procure an extraordinarily talented seamstress and convince her to sew a most unorthodox –to the seamstress, at least- styled gown just to see the look on their princess's face.

"Look next to it," Legolas told her softly. The shift in direction of the twin pools of liquid sapphire orbs that were her eyes told the elf she had obeyed, and the little gasp of udder delight made his grin all the wider. She slowly approached, as if not daring to believe it was real.

She reached out a careful hand to touch the pristine, snowy gowns, one smaller than the other and tinged the slightest sunset pink.

The delicate, fairy-like golden embroidery that wrapped around the bosom of the empire-waist, sleeveless, strapless gown was a work of art. Out from under the scalloped bottom edge of the gold and silver embroidery cascaded a multitude of flawlessly transparent gauzy, skirts, each one as thin as a butterfly's wing. All white, one on top of another, on top of another, and another, and another… Until the skirt gave a frothy, opaquely cloud like illusion of something that you should be able to see through, but couldn't, something that looked so light and delicate and ethereal that it looked like it should be rustling and blowing softly in an invisible wind.

There were two twin armbands of gold and silver, studded with pearls and diamonds, matching the style and intricacy of the embroidered bosom of the gown. Hanging between them, meant to be draped across the wearer's back, was a length of snowy white cloth. The center of the top of the cloth swagged upwards, to clip to either the top seam of the back of the dress, or the back of a necklace, should the wearer of the gown don one.

The dainty slippers were tiny and delicate enough for a fairy, for they looked like they should never have to touch the ground.

The smaller dress beside it was almost identical, save for the lack of the armbands and cape, and the embroidery was a bit simpler, the ruffles more numerous, and a decidedly pink ever so slight tinge to the skirts.

The gown was, according to Setsuna, an almost exact duplicate of Serenity's official gown of state, and, she had added softly, her wedding gown. The smaller one was undoubtedly for little Usagi, or Small Lady as Setsuna liked to call her.

A squeal lilted the air so suddenly that both Setsuna and Legolas jumped, turning as a small pink blur flew past them to come to a screeching halt in front of the pink and white gown.

"Mama!" Chibi-Usa gasped. "Is…is that for me?"

"I think so, love," Serenity turned away from the gowns and looked at Setsuna with the most seriousness Legolas had ever seen in her eyes. She then looked to Legolas, and he smiled. He liked her best, when she was liked this- almost as if she was _startled back to her fully-sane self._

Setsuna, so long ago, after she had first awakened from her life as Ambrostosa and joined them in their quest through time to find the rest of Serenity's guardians, had fully explained to Legolas what had happened.

Indeed, as he had suspected that day in Imladris, when Sauron had stopped feeding off the excess power within Serenity that was the power-threads of her friends, the threads connecting the souls of her guardians to their planets, it had been too much, and she had been forced to cast her friends from herself lest she be torn apart by too much power.

It was set up so that at the mortal age of eighteen, each of her Senshi would be granted their memories of their time in what Setsuna had called the 'Silver Millennium' and their time in Serenity's dream world. Their connection to their princess, Setsuna had explained, allowed Serenity to know when those memories were about to be restored, so she could get close enough in time to return to them the bit of power she had kept to herself, in the form of the rainbow prism she was never without, the bits of power that effectively acted as keys to her Senshi's full power. Without that last bit of power, they would try to transform without meaning to, and do so unsuccessfully, and most likely die.

Which was why they had settled in a small town near the edge of the estate known as Toirhart fief- according to both women, another Senshi's time was near.

"We'll leave you to try them on," Setsuna said, and she left the room, Legolas following. They exited the room and entered the one next to it. Silence reigned for a moment as Legolas sat on the bed, picking up his sword and from by the window on his way and fishing a whet stone from his pouch at his side. Setsuna went to the window, her Time Staff cleverly disguised by another one of Serenity's illusion tricks as a simple wooden walking stick.

"It is odd," Setsuna said out of the blue, looking down at the medieval shops and styles and people from their inn room window. "That history is turning out startlingly similar to the falsified history of Serenity's dreamworld."

Legolas was silent for a moment- he really wouldn't know, seeing as he had not been a part of that dreamworld. But he had seen glimpses of it, whether through Serenity's playful illusions or stories oft told.

"Perhaps," Legolas responded after a moment. "That could be a result of Serenity's accidentally tapping into your power of being so in tune with time? You did share the same body, technically, for quite some time. Is it possible some of your abilities of predicting time bled into hers?"

"I had thought of that," Setsuna nodded, turning away from the window and drawing the thick drapes shut. They exchanged wry grins, thinking the same thing- It was one of those rare times that something came precariously close to making sense.

A scream split the air, and at once both warriors had darted from the door, respective weapons in hand. They burst into the room Serenity and Chibi-Usa shared, to find little Usagi kneeling by her mother, eyes wide and startled, though also lit with the gleam experience- she had seen her mother thus before, though only thrice.

Serenity clutched her hair, her golden masses, contrasted sharply by the twin long black strands framing her face (the black had been steadily receding for several decades now) spilling forward over her frame. The frothy whiteness of her skirts seemed to melt and flow all around her as she knelt on the floor, head bowed and whimpering.

"Renity!" Legolas darted forward and was down on one knee before her as Setsuna swooped in and scooped up the little princess and deposited her among fluttering pale pink skirts on the bed before returning to the side of her liege.

"Highness?" Setsuna smoothed Serenity's hair away from her face as Legolas coaxed the girl to put her head up. Tears streaked down her face, and she rocked back and forth, arms wrapped around her waist, eyes shut tight.

"No, no…" she murmured, voice choked with sobs. "It hurts, it burns…"

"What burns?" Legolas demanded, checking her over for wounds.

"The pain…both pains…" she whispered. "But oh, how one hurts more than the other…"

Suddenly her eyes snapped open, startlingly clear and bright, filled with laughter and pain. The pain seemed…shadowy, as if it were not her own.

"They're both there!" Serenity gasped, her voice filled with awe and agony. "Both are followed…" She closed her eyes again, as if savoring an image only she could see.

"Which ones, Usa-chan?" Setsuna asked softly.

"Bright…" Serenity whispered. "One so bright…so golden…" her eyes opened again, and they were filled with mourning. "But so tarnished…"

"Venus," Setsuna said to herself, casting a thick lock of dark hair back over her shoulder as she cupped Serenity's chin and pulled the girl's face over to look at her. "Who is the other one, child? Who else is with her? Do they remember yet?"

Serenity shook her head lightly. "Their time is not yet here…"

"You said there were two," Legolas said softly. Serenity looked at him. "Who? Mercury? Mars? Jupiter? Your husband?"

"No…" Serenity whispered. She frowned in confusion. "But, yes…"

"We don't understand, highness," Setsuna said softly. Serenity looked at her in

confusion.

"No…" she said. "And yes. Venus is there. Aphrodite's child. Aunt Aphrodite." She giggled as if remembering something sweet. Then sobered again. "But the other one…" She looked to Legolas. "She's not one of mine… But like mine."

"Another Senshi?" Setsuna frowned. "Who, Serenity? The Starlights?"

But Serenity would say no more. She snuggled into Legolas's embrace, eyes closed, smiling peacefully, singing softly.

"Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are…"

Setsuna and Legolas exchanged glances. They would get no more out of her now. Legolas lifted Serenity into his arms and stood as Setsuna picked up Chibi-Usa, who was looking at her mother with fascination, like she had met a new friend. Setsuna didn't bother to be worried about the child seeing her mother thus- worrying never helped anyone.

Legolas came over and laid Serenity on the bed as soon as Chibi-Usa was out of the way. By silent agreement, Setsuna moved to take the small pink-haired-died-blonde child from the room, but she would have none of it. She wiggled expertly and dropped the ground, rushing and darting past Legolas to leap up onto the bed with uncanny agility. She plopped down next to her mother, and placed her little hand on the woman's forehead.

At once, a silver, pink tinged light engulfed mother and daughter, and Chibi-Usa's eyes closed, a pert little frown of concentration on her face. Legolas moved forward, but stopped himself even as Setsuna raised an arm to bar him, her staff gripped tightly in her other hand. Her eyes were bright and hard, her lips drawn into a tight line.  
            "What magic does the child work?" Legolas asked softly.

"She's a daughter of the most powerful bloodlines in history," Setsuna said softly. A small smile flitted across her face. "In time, there will be little she cannot do. But as it is with all such beings, they choose something to focus the majority of their gifts around, lest all their power get away from them and become wild. Chibi-Usa," she nodded to the little girl. "Perhaps because of her mother's penchants for dreams and wishes, subconsciously chose to become a Dreamreader. She's looking into her mother's mind to see what it is she saw. She suspects something."

"She is no ordinary child," Legolas murmured. Setsuna shook her head.

"No," she said. "No she's not. She's much more, even if you didn't take into account the fact that she is nearing two thousand years old…" Any other time, she may have quirked her lips, but now, she, along with Legolas, gazed intently at the child that was not a child beside the woman who was not a woman.

After a moment, the glow began to fade to a twinkling, sparkling myriad of pixie lights twirling all around the princess of earth and moon. Softly, her voice eerily like her mothers, she opened her mouth and began to sing in softly sweet soprano tones that despite their volume seemed to carry to Mare Serenatis itself.

"And so, the Sentinel shall sing…shall sing…she shall sing… Let her sing…" Her voice faded down into a hum, and with a yawn she curled up beside her mother, and drifted off to sleep.

Legolas and Setsuna exchanged glances. 

Sentinel?

Setsuna glanced out the window, her gaze distant…

_Perhaps…_ her thoughts wafted around in her own mind on a curiously calm mental breeze. She pursed her lips. Was it possible?

A tantalizing scent of a memory…something she could just barely grasp…but it was enough.

"Your thoughts carry much weight," Legolas said softly, and just in such the right way that she heard him, but it did not shatter her concentration. An elvish trick, she thought with a flicker of amused curiousity, and one she would much like to learn. But later…

"I barely remember something about regarding Sentinels." Setsuna stated after a moment. She leaned against the doorframe. Legolas regarded her stormy face as she stared at the woodgrain of the floor, concentrating, speaking slowly and deliberately, as if, word by word, she was erecting an ancient puzzle.

"More like a dream," she amended after a moment. "But a dream that wasn't mine. There were times," she said. "When we were all within Serenity's dreamworld, guarding her mind and soul from Sauron's influence at the same time taking advantage of the dreamworld to help her train herself, there were times when things…would happen. Things that didn't always fit. They were never enough to pay attention to… But our last battle…"

With a seriousness Legolas had come to recognize as a trademark of the stoic Senshi, Setsuna retold to him, in greater detail than he remembered it being told last time he'd heard it, the last battle they'd ever had within Serenity's dreamworld- the battle with Chaos, and the arrival of Serenity's future self, Cosmos. A self so far into the future she wasn't even the same being anymore.

"See, we never intended to die like that," Setsuna told him. "We always had a certain measure of control over the dreamworld around us. But when we tried to keep us from fading, from turning against her, something interfered. It carries the same…soul scent, is the only way I can describe it, yes- soul scent. It carried the same soul scent as various things throughout our past in the dreams. Things I'd never paid attention to, most unusual for me. Even now I wonder if even that, my not paying attention, had not been of my own doing. This force, whatever it was, it wasn't hostile- but it was firm. So totally beyond even me…beyond all our control…beyond the hold and grasp of time and space. As if it was time. So intangible and untouchable to us it might as well have not existed. Ghosts were more suspeptible to us than her. Like water to water…touching, but blending harmlessly, hardly aware of the other…

"It was then, in that slight moment, when Cosmos appeared, as we watched without bodies even in the dreamworld, that I recognized it. Cosmos had been _real. Not part of the dream. It had been her that had influenced that last battle. But why? That is something I've never been able to answer."_

She looked up again, gazing at her sleeping princess, and said no more.

"Patience, wake up!" Seraphina snapped at the fire, and at the image of a darkened, sparse room and the form of a raven haired girl asleep in a bed across the room. The girl stirred suddenly, sitting up and staring across her bedroom at the fire that had lit itself in her grate, the vision of a woman with hair even blacker than hers with golden, slanted eyes staring at her out of it.

Any other resident of Salem, Massachusetts, would have run screaming, shouting of witchcraft, even without the paranoia and hate spells that a particularily nasty spirit would have cast over the town had Patience Smith not rooted it out the week before. Because of this, the Salem Witch Trials had never taken place, never even begun. Patience was never sure which bothered her more- the fact that she knew that somehow, someway, somewhere, such Trials had taken place, or the fact that she had adverted them. Of course, the abnormality of referring to herself by the either the name 'Rei Hino' or 'Mars' came in a close second to her increasingly accurate premonition skills.

The latter fact, dealing with her talents, she owed to the aide of the woman looking at her impatiently from the fire.

"What do you want, Sera?" Patience yawned, slipping out of bed in only her cotton shift and nightcap and padding softly across the hard dirt packed floor to kneel before the fire.

"I need your help- you're the one whose specialty is fire." Seraphina of Toirhart, or more relevantly, Seraphina of 187 ago to Patience's present 1691, had never been patient. She didn't know how, but Patience knew she had known Sera a long, long time ago, before her life as Patience.

            Patience shook herself free of these thoughts and set to the task at hand.

            "Fire, thou say?" She asked. "What doust thou require of mine own skill with flame?"

            "I've a girl whose been fire-cursed," Sera told her, leaning back in a chair. Patience could see the luxurious –by her standards, anyway, having been raised Puritan- room behind her, and a goblet of wine in her hand. "By a man dabbling in dark arts not enough to know what he was doing when he screamed some not nice things at her, but good enough for his curse to be taken literally by the dark magic he had acquired. Without an incantation."

            Patience winced. "Ouch," she whistled lowly. Dejavu washed over her at that particular set of motions (wincing, saying 'ouch,' then whistling), and just as quickly she dismissed it- it happened all too often.

            "What do you recommend?" Sera asked. Patience raised an eyebrow.

"You're asking me?"

            Sera growled, and Patience laughed, waving her hand as she moved to sit cross legged on the floor. "All right, all right. Tell me everything."

**_To Be Continued…_**

I'm going to clear this up right now, everyone- **Seraphina**** is NOT otaku Senshi, original, old, or anything. She is not my character- she _is_ from the Sailor Moon continuum! Have fun trying to figure out who she is!!!**

Now, besides that, first off, I have a new fic- Turning of the Tables. It's an X-Men Evo fic, my first. Am just recently semi-hooked on the show, and am desperately trying to keep myself from the tacky clutches of being tempted to do an X-Men Evo/SM crossover…unless anyone wants me to do one…?

Anyways… Gomen nasaii minna-chans for the hiatus!!! Had a bit of a writer's block, but I'm over it! Chappies should be quicker in coming, now… (how often have I said that? Oiy…)

Ooooh, good news! I finally got my paws on the subbed StarS season!!!!!!!!! YES!!! *does backflips* Yayness! I'm soooo happy! ^____^

Are things confusing yet? Heh, don't worry, things are going to speed up even more…hang on for the ride! This hurricane is just getting started! Try to hold on til we get to the eye of the storm, k? *waves* Until next time, ja ne!

**Hope Makes the Universe Shine,**

_Makura Koneko_

**P.S.** Evanescence rules. Period.

**_*ALL STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY*_**


	6. Chapter Six: Four for the Price of Three

**__**

**__**

**_Dream of Reality_**  
  
**Chapter Six**

  
  


by _Makura Koneko_

**Salem****, ****Massachusetts****, 1691**

Patience Smith sighed and rubbed her brow, and sat back on her heels. The fire was ready- it only needed to sit there for a while and, for lack of a better term, 'simmer.'

It would take the better half of a day, she knew. Once again she was glad for the convenience of time- for Seraphina, it would be barely a few minutes after she cut off the conversation with Patience before Patience would arrive with her remedy. For Patience, it had been a week since she had talked to her friend.

Patience Anne Smith was, by nature, a both fiery and impatient girl. Patience, her namesake, had not come naturally to her, but it was a trait she now found invaluable. It allowed to her gain a grip on her temper when, without it, she would most likely have a much harder life. It was also a trait that had cost her dearly before she'd learn to value it.

Shoving aside old, not of the pleasant, memories, Patience rose to her feet, wiping the sweat off her brow. She moving to the door between two of the only four windows in the single-room cabin on the edge of a small pond. She supposed she might as well use the next hours before the fire-remedy would be ready for something beneficial.

Patience spent the rest of the day weeding her vegetable garden, tending her herb patch, gathering the last of the season's berries and roots from a nearby area of the forest, and setting out said berries and roots to dry in the sun.

That done, she changed into her better dress, a simple dark brown and white smock and cap with serviceable shoes with buckles she had shined just yesterday and relatively new crimson wool shawl. A basket over her arm was filled with a weeks worth of dried herbs and berries and roots and packets of seeds. Stepping outside, she whistled a sweet tune and several large black birds and a few smaller ones swooped downs.

The crows and ravens landed in separate groups, and for the most part ignored one another.

Using a gift she had discovered long ago, using her mind and heart only, she conveyed strong desires rather than words and thoughts to the creatures, expressing her wish that they guard her home, and come to her at once should someone, anyone, approach the cabin or the fire left the hearth.

On the long walk to town, she let her thoughts wander.

She'd known Seraphina for the better part of the year. There were few things Patience knew for sure about the older woman- one, was that Seraphina was from the year 1504, from a place called Toirhart in England. Both were accomplished and knowledgable in arts similar to what someone of the ignorant would call 'magic.' Both didn't know how, exactly, they knew so much about the subject, and both had confessed that it seemed to be almost instinctual. 

Two, both women agreed that they had met before. Not known each other perhaps, but known one another. They also agreed that they doubted they had been allies. Enemies? Patience doubted it, though Seraphina was inclined to believe the opposite. 

As it was, Patience had no doubt that had they been born and met in the same time, they would have been rivals. Perhaps not enemies, exactly, but definitely adversaries. As it was, only their mutual, desperate desire one night to figure out what exactly had happened, what had allowed themselves to communicate through fire had kept them civil to one another.

They never did figure out exactly what had triggered the first connection, but they did figure out how to duplicate it, through directly a certain flavor of desire into a fire, one was able to mold the flame nearest the other person into a visual and audible portal. And, when need be, a transportational one.

The one personal thing Patience knew about Seraphina, aside from the more mundane details such as the fact her mother died in childbed (not uncommon) and she was an only child and had never married, was that Seraphina was not human.

Whether or not Seraphina knew this, Patience didn't know, for she had never asked nor let on she knew. Patience had often wondered if that was a mistake…

The moment Patience entered the town square, people began calling out greetings. It was market day, and many were out and about, even more so than usual due to the nearing of some holiday or other, family and friends making the innkeepers happy people.

Only a select few residents of Salem were aware of the fact that the reason for the steady increase of hate and suspicion and superstition towards one another for supposed 'witchcraft' was a result of a maliciously devious evil sprite whom had decided to make Salem his personal playground. All most people knew was that, for some reason, when Patience Smith came to town, people were suddenly happier. This was, of course, because Patience's entire reason for coming to Salem had been to investiage the death of her cousin in a mob. Her cousin, it seemed had been friends with a convicted 'witch' and had been stoned to death. Patience, rather than take her anger out on the townspeople, had evicted the sprite. 

But not before, as it had many times previous, her temper had gotten the better of her one night admist taunts and mocking and fearful jabbing from witch-haters whom had recognized her alikeness to her cousin.

People had gotten hurt.

It had been that night Patience had decided to embrace her namesake, to finally fine tune the only leash she knew would keep her from loosing control like that again.

Setting aside those old thoughts, Patience fixed a polite smile on her face and made her way towards her usual stops, hoping the fire remedy would be ready by the time she got home.

Elizabeth drifted at the edge of wakefulness, not quite willing to return fully to the world of the waking. Then the pain would come. She didn't want to feel the pain- from either of the two sources.

But, despite her best efforts, she couldn't shake the uneasy feeling that someone was watching her. And so, knowing that with this realization she would get no more sleep, she forced herself to the surface of reality, and drew one eye open.

She smiled despite herself at who sat there, sound asleep in a plush chair dragged to her bedside, his arms folded across his broad, muscled chest. His chin was lowered, locks of that fathomless black hair that had escaped the low ponytail at the nape of his neck fell forward over his lightly golden tanned face.

Deciding against waking the man that was as good as her older brother, Elizabeth rolled away from Darius Toirhart, wincing as she did so, but knowing at the same time that her physical pain was far less than it could have been.

But oh, how even that pain was so meaningless compared to the other pain that was once again stirring back to wakefulness within her.

He was gone.

She knew he was- as well as she knew her name, she knew he was gone. Oh, not physically gone. But he would never truly be hers again. Not since he had realized why, exactly, the fire had practically extinguished itself once Elizabeth had disappeared into the manor. Not since he had found out that no one, not even he himself whom had plunged his hands into the fire flaming off her body in an attempt to get her to the ground to roll out the fire, had even a scratch nor burn.

She buried herself down, down, down deep inside herself where even the pain of that knowledge couldn't find her. Curled up within her very soul of souls, she cried, fought the pain, fought the despair, clawed and kicked and bit at the loneliness. All these things that had been, for years, trying to gnaw holes in her heart through which to weave threads of bitterness and hate into her life.

And so she stood guard before that heart, desperately fending off the anguish as her physical coiled itself into a ball and cried, and cried and cried until she could cry no more, and her eyes, empty and tearbright, stared into nothingness.

Elizabeth clung to her heart. It was her lifeline. She dare not run any further into herself, lest she loose herself completely. But what other choice did she have? She couldn't face the wolves that were pain, loneliness, bitterness, hate and spitefulness that nipped at her heels even now. And so she clung to that golden light within herself that was her heart of hearts.

And as she clung to it, she began to sink…sink into it, the goldenness enveloping her like a warm embrace.

And suddenly she was inside- something grabbed at her heels, the very last tendril of herself before she was fully within wherever she was being pulled into. Suddenly she was somewhere else.

Suddenly she had a body, and as her dizziness and confusion cleared, she began to shiver with the dirtiness that seemed to penetrate every ounce of her being.

And then she heard a voice.

"Perfect," Patience murmured, as the final tendril of flame, guided by her coaxing, slipped down into the slender bottle. Quickly she dropped it into the padded basket, before it became to hot to hold. She'd have to create a spell, some day, to ward off a bottle becoming too hot to burn the holder. She made a mental note on that, then adjusted her cap, tightened her shawl around her and picked up the basket.

With one last glance around her to make sure nothing was out of place before she left, Patience let a droning murmur rise from her throat, to her lips, pouring from her lungs to wrap around each and ever lick of fire in the hearth. The fire climbed, grew, roared, and then finally bowed to her. 

Smiling ever so slightly with smug satisfaction, Patience stepped into the fire, and entered a room that was undoubtedly of the medieval times. Lit only by the pale moonlight that filtered in through the open window, the place had an aura of fantasy that made Patience shiver with girlish delight.

She frowned- she had work to do. She shoved such childish thoughts aside, and looked around.

Asleep in the bed across the room was a golden haired, fair skinned beauty of a woman, despite the bandages still around her head. To her right, under the window, was a wooden desk with an oil lamp and basket with some bandages and clay and glass jars of poultices, salves, herbs, creams and other medicines. Many of which Patience recognized as her own.

Stepping closer to the bed, Patience examined the girl with a practiced eye. The poultices Patience had sent through the fire that first time a week ago had helped speed the healing, she noticed with satisfaction. Remembering that occasion, she remembered Seraphina and looked around, and frowned when she not find her.

She did, however, spot an Adonis of a man leaning in the doorway, his tall, powerful frame hidden in shadow. Lean but broad shouldered, muscles like that of a panther rippled under deep blue velvet finery. So deep a blue, she noticed, yet they were nothing to rival his eyes. Fathomless and almost catlike in their predatory gleam, they held a dangerous beauty. A god-like, finely chiseled, lightly golden tanned face framed by chin-length locks of blackest night, tamed by a cord at the nape of a powerful neck. A few tendrils escaped to brush his lips and chin.

Something deep inside her stirred.

The seeds of obsession? She examined the emotion closer as she and the man stared straight into one another's eyes.

No, not that.

….Affection?

Closer.

…Fear?

The tiniest bit, yes.

She frowned, eyes flickering.

Could it be…loyalty?

_Yes!_ Her mind screamed, surprising herself. A fierce, deep, age old current of loyalty to something about that man. Not quite the man himself…or was it?

It was too faint, too old and tarnished to tell clearly, but it was there. For whatever reason, Patience would die for this man.

And, because of that, because she didn't know why, she instantly hated him.

"My name is Patience Smith," she declared with a stony defiance underlining her voice. She glared challenge. "I'm here to see Goodwoman Seraphina and tend to Gooddaughter Elizabeth."

The man glanced over her one more time, before pushing away from the doorframe and striding towards her, languidly, as if he owned the place and knew everything about her. Everything.

"My name is Darius Toirhart," he told her, and were she a lesser woman his mere voice would have made her melt. "Elizabeth is like my sister." He leaned closer, and that dangerous beauty she had identified in his eyes earlier intensified tenfold. "Fail to help her and you shall regret it." He straightened again, turned, and left. He paused in the doorway. "I will summon Sera. Stay put."

Patience stared after him, and forced herself to call upon her namesake and take a deep breath. She sat in a chair beside Elizabeth's bed, scowling.

In a few moments, despite her simmering temper, she found herself yawning, the bed beside her looking tempting. She fought with herself, continually, until eventually, she reasoned, she needed to be at her best to tend to Elizabeth, didn't she? Fire magic was tricky business…

She didn't notice the almost alien tint her reasoning had, and instead rolled onto the bed beside Elizabeth, stretched, and slipped into an unnatural sleep.

"She's here already?" Seraphina's eyes widened, and she turned from the stove as Darius entered the massive kitchens beneath the manor. Darius raised an eyebrow- he hadn't even said anything.

"Nevermind," she said, waving off his questions. His lips quirked in mild amusement. "She's with Elizabeth. I told her to stay put."

Seraphina snorted. "The day Patience Smith obeys anyone she doesn't want to will be the day the world ends." She said this with the utmost conviction, and wiggled out of her flour and egg stained apron, tossed it to a freckled scullery maid, bid farewell to the chefs she'd  been assisting, and followed Darius up to the higher levels.

They came to the door of Elizabeth's room, and Seraphina came up short. Darius stopped, as well, looking at the blue-black haired, golden eyed woman.

"What is it?" He asked softly. Seraphina didn't reply, only closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. When she opened them, she gasped, and leaped forward, shoving the door open to slam against the stone walls. She stood, legs spread, horror on her face.

Darius ran in- he didn't have the magical sight that Sera did, but even he could sense the difference. The thickness of the air, the unlikeliness of finding Patience asleep, the black edge the moonlight seemed to have.

Fighting came naturally to him, and he fell into a predatorial stance, eyes shifting everywhere- only to land on Sera.

Seraphina eyes were wide, and a flicker of memory fed the tiny flame of fear that sparked inside her. She darted to the bed, grabbed Elizabeth's face in her own, forced the girl's unseeing cornflower blue eyes open, and stared straight into them. With a deep breath, she dived into Elizabeth's soul.

Serenity opened her eyes.

She smiled.

Three…now there were three…

What was this? A fourth? No, it was the one she'd sensed earlier… Not a Senshi, not _her Senshi, but someone who called to her nonetheless._

Serenity sat up in bed, the moonlight washing over her features, illuminating her translucent skin and making her hair aglow.

Out of bed she slipped, padding softly on fairy feet to the window. With a whisper of power, a wisp of misty light, her nightgown was replaced by the gown of a queen, a gift, she faintly remembered. Her thoughts were elsewhere.

"Mama?" A soft voice, whispered, slightly unsure. Serenity turned from the window, a smile of an angel on her face.

"Sleep, lovey." She told her child. "Mama will be back in a little bit. Go back to sleep."

"You're going to go get Papa, aren't you?" The child said after a moment. Serenity was silent, her smile all the answer the little pink haired girl needed. The girl child smiled, and lay back down, snuggled deep into the quilts and pillows as she sank back into slumber.

Serenity raised her arms, and as if it were only a trick of the light and senses, the window seemed to gradually, and yet all at once, melt and flow into the form of a grand crystal balcony.

Softly, as if her feet hardly even touched the ground, she moved to the center of the balcony, arms still upraised as she twirled and danced and smiled and laughed.

The faster she twirled, the more opalescent colored glittery lights appeared, like powdered stars swirled around her until she was completely cocooned in a shell of stars.

And when the cocoon faded, shattered, broke and scattered away, like a butterfly she emerged with great translucent, wings far grander than any mythical creature ever known to man, colored every color of every dream.

She held out her hands, and in them formed an object wholly unearthly. At first it was a golden-tinged heart, then a deep two-tone deep gold and green rose, then a withering flame of living scarlet crystal. She raised it to her lips and kissed it sweetly, even as it continued to change between the three forms.

"I'm coming," she whispered, with a shimmer of light around her slender form, she took to the sky, a crystal of rainbows clutched to her bosom.

**_To Be Continued…_**

Well, sorry for taking so long! This is one of those fics that's impossible to write unless I'm in precisely the right mood. Does that make sense?

Anyways, as to the SM/X-Men Evo fanfic, perhaps I will, but as of the moment I've lost interest in X-Men Evo at the moment. If I ever pick up interest again, I will definitely consider an SM crossover.

Anyways, not to blow my own horn, but does that description of Darius not make you wanna just melt? I was! I need to go put myself in the freezer now so I can stop…Else I'm gonna soak through the carpet… ^_^;;;

Went rafting with my boyfriend last week…twas tres fun!

Wahoo, finally got a webcam! *cough* Just as a random side note. ^_^

Anyways, hope you enjoyed, pleeeeeease review- I think this fic is loosing steam… Oh well. Almost over. Couple more chapters to go and I'll wrap it up. I may take a break from the fanfiction world for a while…life is getting hectic. Taking on a few more classes this year, soooo… Yeah. Fun.

Neeways, until next time! Ja ne!

**Hope Makes the Universe Shine,**

_Makura Koneko_

***ALL STANDARD DISCLAIMERS APPLY***


	7. Chapter Seven: A Gathering

**_Dream of Reality_**  
  
**Chapter Seven**

  
by _Makura Koneko_

Seraphina was suffocating in darkness, in evil, in the putrid stink of malice. She coughed, hacked, choked and gagged, the blackness clogging her throat and nostrils and ears, wiggling into the microscopic crevices between skin cells.

Which was odd, seeing as she didn't have a body to play host to those skin cells. She tried swimming, but there was no air or water to push against, and the darkness only slipped away from her feet and arms only to enclose again once she had stilled for a rest.

And so, she decided, she couldn't rest. She had to keep going! And so she swam and swam, gaining little purchase in a direction she wasn't even sure she wanted to go. But anything was better than nothing. She had to keep moving, keep thinking, lest the darkness wiggle its way around her heart and mind, turning her into a puppet dangled by the blackest of strings and a blacker puppetmaster.

And that was when she felt it- the faintest brushes against her mind, and in its foulness it was beyond mortal comprehension.

And so she screamed, and thought of how she would fail to save this girl whom she had felt such a kinship with…something she would never get to explore…

"Elizabeth!" She cried, and then all was darkness.

Elizabeth didn't know where she was, but she did know that wherever she was, she was safe. She was in some place golden and warm, and the shadows couldn't pass the shimmering golden wall that was off to her right. To her left, a far ways away, there was another wall, a solid ring all around her. She tried not to listen to the whispers of the darkness that surrounded her, pressing her hands over her ears.

_Mina…_

Elizabeth gasped. That voice! So familiar! It was laced with…so many things…so many emotions that Elizabeth herself had been feeling for so long…loneliness…despair… Mere echoes of happiness.

_Mina, what are you doing here…?_

She found herself looking around for the voice. Somehow, she knew, the owner was a prisoner of this darkness just as she was. This darkness that had been hiding inside her, for who knew how long? Maybe, together with whoever was trapped along with her, they could force this darkness from Elizabeth's heart…maybe then she would be free of her curse…

"Mina?"

Elizabeth turned, telling herself she was responding to the sound of another voice, not the name.

She came face to face with a young girl, no more than fourteen, with chin length black hair so straight and silky it looked like, if it wanted to, it could float, framing a pixie face with large amethyst eyes over pale pink lips, all set into an alabaster white face.

"Wh-who are you?" Elizabeth breathed, fighting the screaming sensation to run and hug the girl and never let go.

The girl's eyes widened, then narrowed.

"How old are you?" The girl demanded, and Elizabeth's attention momentarily flicked to where the girl had adjusted her grip on a tall, six foot polished ebony staff toped with an eighteen inch long, wickedly sharp blade curving over a smaller duplicate. Although she'd never seen such a device before, its name wafted to the surface of Elizabeth's mind… _'The Silence Glaive…'_

Elizabeth shivered, wrapping her arms around herself and backing away even as the girl repeated her question, "How old are you, Mina?"

"My name's not Mina," Elizabeth responded, with much more control in her voice than she felt.

"What is it then?" The girl's voice was soft, soft as silence… Elizabeth shook that thought away.

"Elizabeth," she answered. "And I am seventeen."

The girl frowned. "Well that explains it…" She looked at Elizabeth again. "Then how are you here? It's too soon for you to be able to be here."

"I don't know!" Elizabeth cried. Her eyes met those of the younger black haired girl, and she froze. Something in those eyes called her, 'liar!' But she _wasn't lying! But she _didn't_ know! Did she? Elizabeth paused…_

"I was running…" she whispered. "Running from that…that darkness… I thought it was my curse, finally deciding to kill me another way besides fire…but…it's too dark… I ran into myself. To hide." 

_'How weird does _that _sound?'_ she thought sarcastically. But then she looked around. 

"This…this is…this is my heart, isn't it? I'm hiding inside my own soul."

The black haired girl nodded. Elizabeth looked at her, then narrowed her eyes, opening her mouth to ask-

A scream….

"Elizabeth!"

Another voice! And this, too, was not coming from the malicious whispers of the darkness that lingered just outside the warm golden barrier that was the edges of her heart and soul.

"Who is that?" The black haired girl asked, an edge to her voice. Elizabeth opened her mouth to speak, but a scream that wasn't carried on air, but vibrated through Elizabeth's very heart, cut her off, and she gasped.

"Sera!" She cried, and without another thought, ran to the golden barrier and dived back outside, intent on saving the girl that she felt more compassion for than she thought was explainable, considering how before that day they'd been mere acquaintances.

The black haired girl waited only a split second before sighing and plunging after her.

Darius could only sit and watch and wait. The three forms on the bed were frozen, seemingly both physically and in time. Despite the fact that Elizabeth and Seraphina had been staring unblinkingly into one another's eyes for the past hour, those eyes remained moist and bright.

As for the girl Patience, Darius didn't know what to think. She just lay there, an impenetrable heat surrounding her, a burst of flame occasionally licking at her hair and skin. Her clothes were gone- but yet she wasn't naked. Somehow. It was as if her skin had grown an extra layer of shimmering flaming red and gold iridescence. She seemed to almost be waiting for something, as if she were caught up in some sort of metamorphosis of the most unnatural sort.

It was when this occurred to him that he felt it- something tugging at him, in a somehow agonizingly _joyful_ way. He frowned, liking- no, loving the sensation, but hating how alien it was, the fact that he didn't know what caused it. Still frowning, he tried to use every ounce of every skill he possessed as a hunter to trace it back…

And that was how he found himself turning towards the window just as an angel slipped into his world.

Serenity smiled.

It was all she could do- emotions were beyond her, so great they were. She had no choice but to place her joy and erophia and laughing, crying, sobbing ecstasy at seeing him beneath her current of thought, else she loose herself in her emotions…then all would be lost.

And so all she did was smile.

Then she looked to the bed, and her breath caught.

Rei!

Mina!

And…?

As Serenity approached, she brushed a strand of gently curling, waist length blue-black hair away from the pale face of the third woman, and her eyes widened even further.

"Nehelania…" she breathed. She wondered if, in the real world, the Queen of the Dead Moon ever went…sour. Wondered if Chaos had ever tempted her with promises of eternal beauty. Had she grown up alone, like she said she had, too proud to ask for a bedtime story, or had she given in? Pleaded to be allowed to be a child? Had she had her own Senshi? Her own guard? As a ruler of a moon kingdom, she was entitled to such if she wished.

"You know them?"

Serenity turned, thinking his voice was the same as ever. She smiled at him.

"So do you," she told him. The man raised an eyebrow slightly.

"Aye, I know Elizabeth as a sister," he motioned to the pale blonde girl on the bed. "And Seraphina I know by sight. Patience introduced herself to me just a bare half hour ago."

"Elizabeth, Seraphina, and Patience," Serenity murmured, sitting on what little space was available on the bed. Her lips twitched and she giggled. "Patience for my fire warrior, eh? How Rei would laugh…" she grinned. "How she _will laugh."_

And so she bent over the raven haired woman, ignoring the heat slipping off her flesh like rolls of lava, and kissed her forehead at the same time her hand pressed something to her heart.

At once Patience was released from whatever spell had bound her when she'd looked at Elizabeth earlier, and a shuddering gasp tore her throat and lungs. The sense that she had been waiting for something left Darius, as suddenly a brilliant light filled the room, and the heat was raised to near unbearable. There was a cry somewhere between ecstasy and pain, and then laughter…laughter…

Darius looked, and saw a sight he thought only for the most delirious of dreamers. There stood his angel, and the woman Patience, embracing, tears of joy streaming down their faces. But Patience…

How oddly she was clad, and yet it seemed so right. A skirt made of the deepest flaming blood red, the hem jagged as fire and seemingly alive as the light glanced off the fabric with a golden sheen. Her sleeves, too, were cut to resemble fire, and fluttered in an invisible wind. Her bodice was white, as white as snow, and the deep v-neckline plunged to meet a fire red gem set in an ornate wrought gold setting.

Wings of fire stretched from her back, creating the heat that made the room so warm.

Just as he thought this, the wings faded, and Patience knelt, taking the angelic woman's hand in hers, tears streaming down her face as she pressed that snowy hand to her cheek.

Words were exchanged, murmured and filled with devotion and love and friendship, so much so that Darius felt tears at his eyes.

But then the silver haired woman, too, fell to her knees and embraced Patience once more, murmuring something that sound somewhere between a name and endearment. Darius could only pick up one word; 'Mars.'

Forcing himself to speak, Darius said softly, "Can you help the others as well, lady?"

The women looked at him, and pulled out of their embrace and up to their feet. As the silver woman moved to the bed again, the woman called Mars stepped back to stand beside him.

"It does my heart good to see you well again," Darius murmured. 'Mars' flashed him a brilliant smile that belied the pinched, stiff woman from earlier.

"Same here," she said. Then, more softly. "It's good to see you again, Mamoru."

"Darius," he corrected, slightly annoyed. Had she forgotten his name so quickly? There was that smile again, this time lilted with the tiniest bit of mischief as she said nothing in reply.

"What is she doing?" Darius asked a moment later, seeing Serenity run her hands lightly over Elizabeth's form, humming softly to herself.

Mars examined her liege's moves for a moment, then she smiled slightly.

"Clever, my princess," she murmured. She flicked a glance at Darius, then explained. "Elizabeth is caught up in a tangled darkness inside her. Apparently, from what I can see with my Sight, some evil tried to take hold of her, today, but got tangled up in her curse." She frowned then. "But there must be a third evil that got involved, else those two evils, the alien one and the curse, would have canceled each other out and all would be fine. That third darkness threw that off. It is an odd darkness, too… Not evil, just…dark."

Somehow, Darius understood, and nodded. "But that still does not explain what 'your princess' is doing."

"Like me, your…Elizabeth was scheduled to receive some…gifts upon her eighteenth. She is progressing Elizabeth's aging so that she will reach eighteen in mere moments, rather than a few months."

"And these gifts will allow her to free herself of these entangled evils within her?"

"It should. If not, we're here to help," her confidence was so assured that Darius accepted her words without question. Normally such a thing would have bothered him deeply, that he should do something like that so easily. But an odd sort of trust existed between them, a link, different from that he seemed to share with the silver goddess, but just as strong, whether he would accept it or not.

And so, despite the panther prowling inside him, wanting to do something, he simply stood, feet spread and hands clasped behind him, watching and waiting.

Serenity was weaving. Whatever it looked like she was doing, whatever the name, whatever she said, she was weaving. As she hummed, as her voice carried, as her hands moved and her head tilted, she was weaving. Weaving the future.

She smiled. Now, her body was aged just right…now all she had to do, was activate the soul of the Senshi within, provide the seed of power that Serenity had kept all those years, and her warrior of love would do the rest.

And so when at last the final thread was tucked into place, like a little girl reaching for a floating lily in the surface of a pond, she reached her hand down into the water…the waters of Mina's soul…

And she fell, tumbled, head over heals, falling and spiraling and tumbling deeper and deeper into the airless depths.

It was dark, Serenity noted. Far too dark. There were things here she recognized, things that made her weep because she had been to believe that they hadn't been real…such a relief it had been, to think it had all been a dream...

But now, somehow, here inside Mina, it was real…they were real. All rolled up into one rolling, boiling mass of hate and malice and chaos, they were real, every single one of them. And this was but a taste, a single fingertip of the whole beast. It was a parting gift, she realized. A farewell present from her captor, tormentor, destroyer of all she loved.

Sauron had left her a gift, for the time when she awoke and escaped him. Left her something to remember him by for when he was gone.

So had he known?

Perhaps he had, all along, known that he would never make it.

And so he had left his calling card.

A beast constructed of every fear, every self-imagined villain, every monster Serenity had dreamed up. Here was Beryl, there was Galaxia, and again here was the evil Prince Endymion, all laughing at her. Giggling with malice was Black Lady, and dancing on darkened starlight was a mirror of herself, all blackness and cruelty.

They were laughing, still. Laughing laughing laughing because she had believed them gone, believed herself save from their wickedness.

But no.

They were real, now. Sauron had watched her dreams, and every time she created a new monster in her mind, he created it in the flesh. And they, when he had been destroyed, had rolled themselves together to truly create the last beast Sauron had never had time to construct- Chaos.

And so Chaos laughed as Serenity dived, deeper and deeper into the recesses of her friends mind and soul, shooting arrows of light to pierce the darkness. They would fight, yes, but not today. Not today…no, today, she had another mission.

The light grew, and the darkness receded, until Serenity could her voices…

She dived further.

"She's gone," the small voice said plainly.

Legolas whirled to face Chibi-Usa standing in the doorway of a breathtaking crystal balcony that hadn't been there the night before. Setsuna, too, looked to the little princess, her unbound rose pink hair falling in fluffy, silky curls all around her. Garnet eyes twinkled in the starlight with something akin to wisdom, a treasure chest of knowledge and secrets far beyond someone of her extended years.

"Where is she, Small Lady?" The Plutonian warrior asked, walking to her little princess and kneeling. Chibi-Usa smile slightly.

"She went to go get them," she said simply. Her smile widened. "She missed one," she added.

"Missed what?" Legolas asked, coming to kneel beside Setsuna. Chibi-Usa snuggled up in his arms and yawned.

"Hotaru-chan," she said. "Hotaru-chan's there, too."

"How, highness?" Setsuna asked, truly puzzled. How could Serenity have missed the presence of another?  
  


"Because she didn't look into Venus's dreams," the young girl murmured, as if she had read her guardian's thoughts. She reached out and touched Setsuna's cheek lightly. "But I did. We need to go."

Her other hand reached up and took the hand of the elven Prince, and then they vanished, and the crystal balcony began to crumble.

Together, Elizabeth and the black haired girl with the Glaive pulled Seraphina into the stronghold of Elizabeth's heart. She coughed and choked, breathing in the love-scented air.

"Where are we?" She asked when she could speak.

"Inside me," Elizabeth said. She held up her hands, a wry look on her face as if to apologize for not having a better explanation.

"We need to get out," Seraphina said plainly. "Who knows how much time has passed in the real world? We need help- this is beyond us, Elizabeth- that is no curse, out there. That is something from the bowls of hell itself, and its wants soulblood. It won't settle for your death. It wasn't to trap our hearts in chaos for eternity."

Elizabeth shivered, but the smaller girl, the one with the pale porcelain skin, shrugged.

"What else is new?" She said. She looked at Seraphina stonily. "Under the right circumstances, in the past, it is what you, too, would have come to want for us, Nehelania."

Seraphina looked at her in shock- shock at the words and shock at the name which rung with crystal truth in her ears.

But then the girl smiled. "But I am grateful that in the real world, it never came to that. I much prefer this you to the bitch beauty queen of Serenity's dreamworld."

"Wha…?"

But the girl only smiled, and said no more.

"Since you don't remember, me, either of you, you may call me Saturn," she told them, changing the subject as a black marble chair was conjured underneath her as she sat, become solid beneath her bottom just before she would have fallen backwards.

Again, that flickering of remembrance within both Elizabeth and Sera. They looked at each other. What was going on? Saturn's smile widened in amusement.

Then, all at once, all confusion and amusement was forgotten as a bright, piercing silver light penetrated the golden walls, not destroying them, but simply so bright and powerful that it passed right through. They, all three, threw their arms over their faces, lest they be blinded.

"Venus! Saturn! Nehelania! Your liege calls to you! Will you answer our summons?" Despite the words, phrased in royal wordage, the voice was filled with laughter and sunshine.

A glow, a pinprick of warm golden light. Elizabeth gasped, her hands going to her heart. But something was between her and her chest- a…stone? A crystal? She held it to her breast, and the warmth flooded her body…

And again she was falling, twirling, dancing and singing and laughing as she faded through the fabric of time and space….

Heat coursed through her veins, and she raised her hands, letting it lick every inch if her inner flesh. Light caressed her body, enveloping her in a tingling sensation of being everywhere at once.

And then it faded…

And she remembered.

Not a trickle, not a flood, not even a door opening…like a mist that evaporated, she simply…remembered.

Venus opened her eyes, and met the silver ones of her princess hovering above her, haloed by the silver light of the moon behind her, visible out the window, sparkling with inner smiles that rivaled the one on her face. She sat up, briefly noting her new attire, and embraced the faerie woman before her. There were no words, only heart. And it was more than enough.

"You found me," she whispered, smiling. Serenity kissed her on the check, hugging her again, fiercely.

"I'll always find you. Always. We're supposed to be together, all of us. It's the way it's supposed to be. We…are one. Our threads of life are interwoven. We are incomplete without each other." She lightly touched her own temple, and Venus noticed the tendril of golden light flowing from her own heart to dance around Serenity's head. When it faded, her eyes were just a bit brighter, just a bit more…more like her mother's….more like the Usagi Venus remembered from the dreamworld, more like the little Serena before her coronation.

Just a little more…whole.

She pulled away, gently touching the face of her best friend and princess, before she looked around. She spotted Darius, and beside him Mars. Her grin widened as she leaped from the bed with uncanny grace and agility and crossed the room to embrace them both.

Darius stiffened with surprise, and Venus gave him an odd look. She raised her eyebrow at Mars, who shook her head.

"Not yet," she said. Venus nodded in understanding, winking at Darius, who frowned with bafflement. Then, with a grin, Mars nodded to behind Venus.

Venus turned, and a wide, sunny smile spread across her face as she suppressed a giggling squeal.

There sat, on the bed, Nehelania, triple-crescent moon mark on her forehead, eyes just a little more cat-like, tiny white fangs just barely visible within the surprised 'o' formed by her mouth.

And Serenity's hands over hers, smiling gently, waiting for the former DeadMoon Queen to make sense of it all.

"My kingdom…" she said slowly. "Was destroyed. He…the demon king…he was going to move to you, next… Selenity, your mother… She was always good to me. I didn't want to see happen to her what had happened to me. I ran…my Guardians –like your Senshi- did their best to protect me long enough to get me to the control room… I hoped to get a message through…" She looked up to Serenity. "Did it? Did my Guardians die in vain? They could have saved themselves, but for their choice to try and make sure your Moon survived…"

"Mother got the message," Serenity said softly. "But it was too late. She had enough time to try and send myself and my Court and will with a spark of life still in them to Earth…and right into Sauron's grasp." She shook her head. "She did not mean to, but she had only the power to send us…away, and hope it was away from him. It wasn't."

Nehelania closed her eyes in agony, and tears fell down her face as she bent forward, her face buried in Serenity's lap as she began to cry silent sobs, shoulders rising and falling with her choked breaths of grief.

Mars and Venus were silent. They knew all to well the story….they all remembered the day when they had given their lives to make sure Serenity made it safely to Beryl's stronghold… Although they had known that it wasn't real, it had been so, so hard to remember it. And it didn't help that they knew, that even if it were real, they wouldn't have acted any different.

"Of what does she speak?" Darius asked softly. He touched his temple. "I feel I should…remember, but…"

"You'll remember eventually," Venus told him reassuringly, patting him on the shoulder. She paused. "Say, how old are you?"

"Pardon?"

"How old are you? When's your birthday?" Venus elaborated as if speaking to a child. Mars shot her an annoyed look. Venus ignored her and continued to look at Darius as if interrogating him.

"Within a fortnight, last I checked," He said cautiously. "Birthdays have never held much joy for me."

"Well, this one should, cuz it's when you'll remember," Venus chirped with satisfaction. Her smile abruptly faded, however, and her gaze seemed to turn inward as she touched a temple, brow furrowed.

"Venus?" Mars asked, slight concern lilting her voice.

"Its…I think…" Venus froze, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, pain burst through her mind, and she screamed, clutching her head as she fell to her knees. At once, Serenity was at her side, Nehelania following soon after in a cloud of billowing black and gold skirts.

"Mars?" Serenity asked, her voice high with worry.

Mars grabbed Venus's head with both hands, eyes closed, a flickering symbol appearing on her brow…then it faded, and she recoiled, horror on her face.

"Oh, no…" Mars breathed. "It's Saturn and that curse! They're canceling each other out! Saturn is dying!"

"What? How? I thought Saturn had been there all this time…" Nehelania trailed off.

"Yes, but she'd been hiding herself. Now that she's on the same level as the curse, and both are oriented from darkness, they're going to level each other! Mercury would compare it to an algebra equation- a negative plus a negative equals a positive. No more negatives. No more curse, but also no more Saturn."

Just as this was said, Venus convulsed once more, and collapsed into Mars' arms.

"Then we need to get this Saturn out, correct?" Darius inquired, keeping alarm at bay by continuing to coax along the process of logical thinking.

"Duh." Mars muttered rudely. Darius flashed her an annoyed look.

"How did she end up inside Venus, anyway?" Mars asked, brow furrowed. Serenity was silent as all eyes turned to her, and then, slowly, she closed her eyes in pain.

"How could I not have thought of it…?" She whispered. She looked up again, tears and slight insanity shining in her glassy eyes. "Saturn is the second most powerful Senshi, after me. Its simple- no human body could accommodate her. She's simply too… 'big.' Too much power. If she had tried to go into a human, the same thing that happened to me with all my Senshi's souls and power within me without Sauron draining off the excess would happen to her. She'd destroy herself."

"So she went into me, who was reinforced by my sleeping powers," Venus finished. Serenity nodded miserably.

"How could I not have thought of it…?" Serenity wailed miserably, acting more and more like the old Usagi by the minute, Mars noted.

"Because, Renity, you were insane with agony- you were in no condition to thoroughly contemplate anything, let alone something as unexpected as this."

The voice belonged to none sitting around an unconscious Venus, but the smile of relief that lit Serenity's face when she abruptly whirled, stood, and ran to the lean, tall form in the doorway all at once was dazzling.

Mars' eyes narrowed at the clearly non-human male –breathtakingly gorgeous nonhuman male- who embraced the silver princess warmly. Then her eyes landed on the two beside him, and a grin lightened her face.

"Pluto-san!" She cried. The stately woman inclined her head with a wide smile, eyes sparkling, one hand gripping her staff, the other on the shoulder of the little girl at her side. Mars' eyes widened even further. "Chibi-Usa-chan!" She laughed. Chibi-Usa spared a bright smile in her direction, then bounced closer, Pluto, Serenity, and the blonde nonhuman behind her.

Nehelania opened her mouth, a question in her expression.

"Introductions later," Chibi-Usa declared firmly, kneeling beside Venus and taking her hand. She reached over and pulled a handkerchief from out of Darius's pocket, giving him a grin and a cheerful, "Hi, papa!" before using the handkerchief to wipe away the trickle of blood that had begun to seem from Venus's nostril.

Chibi-Usa kissed Venus' forehead, and two symbols, one gold and one the deepest of purples flickered into view, seemingly battling, both weakening.

"Two souls, one body, two sources of enough power to destroy a planet," The blonde man murmured after gazing at the woman with a faraway look for a moment. The faraway look vanished, then, looking to Chibi-Usa. "You know this." The little girl nodded.

"We need a host." The little girl stated firmly. "Both can't stay in there." She raised a hand as everyone opened their mouths to volunteer, save Pluto and the blonde man. "It can't be anyone here. We're all too powerful, too…soul-full."

"So we need a soul-dead body to transfer Saturn's soul to?" Mars said with a disbelieving, flat tone. Chibi-Usa nodded.

Pluto frowned, as if thinking. "What about…not a 'soul-dead' but a 'soul-suppressing' body?"

"I think I speak for us all when I say, come again?" Darius voiced, indeed, what everyone was thinking. Pluto looked to Serenity, whose eyes widened as she remembered…

"You think she would do it?"

"Perhaps."

"Then we need to find her!" Serenity rounded on the blonde man. "Can you find her? Can you? Somehow? If we enhance that elf-searching sense of yours somehow?" The blonde man regarded the little pixie that clung to his arm, and then nodded slowly.

"If indeed, we can 'enhance' it great enough then yes, I believe I could locate Adien and Alaura."

Nehelania looked sharply to the blonde man, eyes widened slightly before looking away. She picked up the handkerchief off the floor- Venus had begun to bleed again.

"Whatever you plan on doing, do it fast," Darius snapped, frowning at them, sweeping aside Venus's sweaty bangs- her breathing was becoming more and more hoarse. As he watched, he could almost see how the battle within her was shredding her mind and body…

"Pluto, can you freeze time in a bubble around Venus?" Serenity asked sharply, for an instant fully an empress-to-be, fully there, fully sane and fully in command.

"You know I cannot, highness." Pluto murmured.

"You did it once-"

"And was punished severely for it. I do not know if They will be as understanding this time around."

"Then we'll bend the rules- slow down time around her, slow as you can." Without waiting for a reply, Serenity turned to the blonde man. "Find them, Legolas, and lets home they still have the ability they had last time we met them…"

"And us?" Mars asked. Serenity looked at her.

"We'll boost Legolas's abilities."

"How?"

"Just give me what power you can, and I will handle it," Legolas informed them smoothly. He gave Serenity an amused smile. "I am glad, now, you insisted once on seeing if our powers were compatible, Renity."

Serenity smiled at him happily, and Darius was partially curious, partially annoyed at the growl that stirred inside him…

"So how do we do it?" Mars asked, moving Venus gently to Nehelania's lap as Pluto came over and kneeled beside her, eyes intense. Chibi-Usa had backed away and slipped into Darius's lap- he realized that he hadn't even noticed when he had wrapped his arms around her, letting her curl up against him.

"You remember the times you and the others gave me your powers?" Serenity asked her. "Like with Babayou and the Deathbusters? Can you do that now? Then I will transfer both yours and mine to Legolas."

Mars nodded. "I remember." She gave her princess a look. "Can you handle it, Odango?"

Serenity's widened, both at her the nickname and concern, both rare signs of open affection from her fiery friend. She nodded. "I can do it, Rei."

Mars regarded her liege for a moment, then with an almost gentle smile, she nodded, and raised her hand to press them over her heart, and closed her eyes. Within moments, she began to glow red…

And as Serenity felt the fire of Mars seep into her veins, she closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and prayed that what she had planned would work…

_'Please,'_ she prayed. '_Let those two sisters answer our call…'_

Serenity never noticed the curiously anxious look Nehelania was giving them.

**To Be Continued…**

Omg, I just watched the first episode of Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (the live-action Sailor Moon TV series that was just released this week in Japan) and its soooooo cute! It's Japanese, ok, so it does have a Power-ranger-ish feel, because they edit different than us, and the fighting scenes are, well, they're…anime style, so it looks like they're dancing. And the costumes could be way better, but the wigs are great, the special effects aren't bad, and the acting is awesome!!! They did SUCH a good job casting! I especially like the girl they got to play Naru. And the music is awesome!

Some sicko but in a 'joke' regarding the Sailor Senshi's popularity with tentacle rape hentai. In the opening song, the final line is 'Sailor Senshi sora no moonlight hearts.' Which I believe translates to 'Sailor Senshi have hearts of moonlight.' But the subtitles say 'Sailor Senshi tentacle rape targets heart moonlight.'

Somebody explain that to me. . I was annoyed, to say the least.

For those of you that want to download the episode (200 mb, eek, and takes about nine hours to download, but it's subtitled!), there are a series of steps you need to follow to get the right programs and codecs and stuff. E-mail me for the steps and links and stuff. For those of you that aren't willing to spend that much time and hard drive space on it, you can get episode synopsis and screen captures at www.genvid.com. Excellent site, and the leading info source on PGSM.

Now, on to the actual topic of this file…

Woooooah… That was a long chapter, even for me! And especially for this story!

Sorry this took so long to get out. I had a serious writer's block –I intended to end the story with this chapter with some sort of illusive cliffhanger-ish ending, but then I had a burst of inspiration, not only to get over the block, but to continue the story, give it an actual plot and goal, but also to bring more LotR elements in. Because, lets face it, the only LotR stuff in here after the first two chapters is Legolas, and even then we haven't been seeing much of him.

Oh, and whose up for a Legolas/Mina pairing? That occurred to me while writing this…or what about Legolas/Rei? Or even Legolas/Nehelania? That would be fun to play with… Take your pick, people, I'm pretty open. We need some romance in here.

Anyways, hope you all enjoyed this extra long chappie- you all deserved it for waiting so long. Until next time! Ja ne!

**Hope Makes the Universe Shine,**

_Makura__ Koneko_


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